Between Who You Are and Who You Could Be
by riveriver
Summary: (between how it is and how it should be). Seth phases, but Leah doesn't.
1. Prologue

_**Disclaimer:** Usual spiel: I own nothing, don't want to, and glad of it. I think SM sucks. All that Blackwater groundwork she laid in Breaking Dawn . . . squished . . . I'll never forgive her._

* * *

 _ **Timeline (According to Lexicon):**_

 _March 16th: Harry Clearwater dies._  
 _March 18th: Harry Clearwater's funeral._  
 _May 25th: Bella learns about imprinting._

* * *

 **Between Who You Are and Who You Could Be**  
(between how it is and how it should be)

* * *

 _hold on to what we are / hold on to your heart  
Of Monsters and Men, "Your Bones"_

* * *

 _"It's one of those bizarre things we have to deal with. It doesn't happen to everyone."_  
 _ **Jacob Black, Eclipse, Chapter 5: 'Imprint'**_

* * *

 **Prologue**

* * *

 _"Did it happen to you?" I finally asked, still looking away. "This love-at-first-sight thing?"_  
 _ **Bella Swan, Eclipse, Chapter 5: 'Imprint'**_

* * *

"Yes," he replies.

If Bella hadn't been sitting, Jacob's absolutely sure that she would have fallen. Maybe she still might. Maybe she'll topple straight off the tree and onto the wet ground where he's sat by her feet.

Once — _before_ — Bella's lack of balance would have made him smile. Throw his head back and laugh, even. Now it has him worried that she'll end up hurting herself, because she's proven to be real good at that.

He waits one minute. Two. Three.

Then, hesitantly, he clears his throat and looks up at her. "Bells?"

She takes a deep, gasping breath at the sound of his voice as if she's been holding it in. Then she scrubs at her face, wiping away tears which Jacob suspects begun to fall almost immediately after he admitted the truth.

"Aw, Bells." He reaches out for her, but lets his hand fall when she flinches away. "C'mon, don't cry."

"I'm not," she lies, turning her head away. "Really. I'm . . . I'm glad. It's good, right? I'm happy for you."

He doesn't believe her. Especially not when she chokes on a sob and wraps her arms around herself, exactly the way she used to after the bloodsucker had left her. The bloodsucker who had broken her into pieces.

But—

 _No._ It's not the same. He doesn't belong to Bella. He has _never_ belonged to Bella. Not even after he'd finally put her back together. Not when she had crashed her motorbike and called him _sort-of beautiful_. And certainly not when she'd run off to Italy after he had begged and begged her to stay with him.

He doesn't belong to Bella, because Bella didn't choose him. Maybe she never would have.

Either way, it doesn't matter. She won't have the chance now.

Jacob doesn't know how he feels about that.

Bella squeezes herself and keeps her eyes on the horizon as she asks, "When?"


	2. one

**_Warnings:_** _Bad language, funerals, grief and loss, with a heavy dose of drama, hurt, and a smaller dose of awkward romance. NOT canon, despite following the same timeline of events. Slow burn. Mature themes. Anti-bloodsucker, like always._

* * *

 _ **Disclaimer:** See previous._

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _This happened thanks to being asked, "Okay so you've written what it might be like if Jacob rejected an imprint . . . but what if he hadn't?"_

 _Challenge accepted._

 _(Truthfully, they probably meant something like "What if Jacob hadn't rejected **Renesmee**?" but, y'know, I have standards.)_

 _Some chapters will be scenes/settings from both the books and movie!verse (and so will play out differently). There will also be 'missing' scenes. But it'll all have a different ending. AU from Harry's death in New Moon. It's also changed some since it was first posted, but I think we're set now._

 _All good? Great._

* * *

 _set me free / leave me be_ _  
Sara Bareilles, "Gravity"_

* * *

 **one.**

* * *

In the days since her dad dropped dead on the carpet and her brother ran away, Leah's seen more of Sam than she has in the past year. He is around _all the fucking time._ Whether she wants him or not, needs him or not — which she most definitely does _not_ — he is there.

And so it shouldn't come as a shock when she sees him sitting at the top of the stairs, but still she wills her heart into a less frantic beat as she closes her mom's door behind her and smothers her unease with a scowl.

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

It's her dad's funeral in less than two hours and they're late. On the other side of the door, Sue is catatonic on her bed — there's no other word for it, although at least she's been dressed for today. But struggling with her mom means Leah's not had a chance to pull a brush through her hair yet, let alone find a change of clothes. And Seth's not even _here_. If he was, he would have been sent downstairs an hour ago to clear the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom. It doesn't matter that Leah has done it three times over already when she couldn't sleep last night. The whole reservation is going to be here, probably half of Neah Bay on top of that.

Hell. She hopes some of them will bring food because she's not cooked a thing (that's what people do when this shit happens — right? It's what they did for Mrs. Black), but there's not enough cutlery and there's no beer or wine or soda. There's not enough chairs. Where is everyone going to sit when they're dying of thirst and hunger? _At a wake?_

"I'm here to help, Lee."

Leah pulls a face at her old name, tries not to wince. "You're not helping, you're just in the way," she tells him, but she sounds more resigned than spiteful. And she hates it.

Sam looks hurt. Leah almost feels guilty for it. She hasn't made him at all welcome in these last few days, and hurting Sam isn't in her nature, has never been in her nature, even if she hates him and hates who she has become because of him. But she holds herself upright and keeps her feet moving even though her legs are more than ready to give way underneath her. She can't take it back now; she's late. There is no time for Sam and his hovering.

"Sorry," he says quietly as he stands up and _finally_ gets out of her way.

She pushes past him and runs downstairs, ignoring that he's in a suit and his hair is tidy (and far too short), ignoring that he looks as if he's slept just about as much as she has. There are dark shadows around his eyes. He either doesn't care that he's being annoying or he's too tired to argue back, whilst Leah feels like she could scream. Especially when she hears him following her.

"Why are you still here? You've not been more than five minutes away from my family since— _"_ She can't say what she wants and harshly swallows the awful words. Instead she waves her hand at the front door which Seth broke three days ago as she passes it, gesturing wildly at the cracks in the frame rather than the carpet where her father had fallen. " _That."_

And she still doesn't know what _that_ was about. Where Seth went, what he had become. Well — she does. She'd seen it with her own eyes but she doesn't want to believe it.

"I'll fix that," Sam tells her, still barely two steps behind as she storms into the kitchen.

"I don't want you to fix it—"

"It's fine. It's not a problem, really—"

She spins round. Sam nearly crashes into her. "But it's not _your_ problem anymore, is it?!" she yells. To hell with being quiet. " _I'm_ not your—"

The noise which escapes Sam and cuts her words off is not entirely human. " _That's not true_."

It is, though. Him carrying her mom out of the hospital because Leah couldn't hold up her own weight, let alone anyone else's, doesn't make it less so. Him staying with her that first night, sitting up with her until dawn, seeing her through those worst hours hasn't changed a goddamn thing.

Leah means to scoff at him, because no, despite all of that, she doesn't believe him. Not after all he has done and put them through — put _her_ through _._ But her derision sounds a little bit off, a little broken, and she bites down on her lip to stop herself from giving anything more away.

He's a liar. If it were true then he wouldn't have left her. He wouldn't have walked away as easily as he did.

And it's not like he doesn't know how she feels. She's angry and sad and messy and exhausted all the fucking time. But then, it's not like she hadn't already been a mess before any of this happened.

Her life's defined by that word. _Before_.

* * *

 _Before_ , Leah had asked Sam if he could swing by her place. Emily was arriving in a few days and she was beyond excited to see her cousin-almost-sister; it was only natural that she wanted Sam to be there, too. Right?

All she wanted was a few hours with them all together. Her family. But only if Sam had the chance, because he'd been disappearing a lot lately and he'd suddenly become this sullen, unreliable person who she scarcely recognised. Especially after nobody had seen him for two weeks.

(Two weeks and three days, to be exact. Long enough to drive Leah absolutely, totally, completely insane. Long enough for Sam to gain a few hard lines around his face which she feared she would never be able to smooth out. Long enough that, when he had finally come home, she only recognised him by the way he'd pressed his scorching lips against hers by way of hello.

He always did that.

Dirty and exhausted, he had wrapped his arms around her and she'd felt him deflate against her. He'd almost brought both of them to the ground. And . . . she'd forgotten her anger. She forgot her despair. It was Sam, after all, and yet it wasn't Sam — at least, not the boy who she'd been missing for so long — but finally he had come home to her. He was alive, and as long as he held her like that then the world was a fine place to be.)

 _You don't have to if you don't want to,_ Leah told him quickly, because he flipped so easily nowadays; she'd said less which had him storming off in a rage. _It's just — I mean, they haven't visited for so long, and I'd really like you to be there. With me. If you can._

Sam looked so sad. After those two weeks and three days, he was always sad or angry or both. Then he said, _I've been kinda crap lately, haven't I, Lee?_

 _Yes_ , she admitted. She never lied. Not to him.

And Sam nodded, because he appreciated that about her. _Is your dad gonna be around?_

Leah blinked. _Of course he is. He's cooking._

 _Okay._ He cupped her cheek and kissed her head, the ghost of a smile on his face. _I'll be there._

* * *

This is not like when Mrs. Black died.

Leah will always remember those days after the accident, after the service. Her mom had cried and cried and cried, which she hadn't even done when her mom had died. She'd shut herself away upstairs, and Leah, Seth and their dad had lived on fish fry for a week because the man didn't know how to cook anything else.

After that, after losing her best friend in the whole world, Sue Clearwater had . . . drifted. There was no other word for it. There was a part of her missing — her right arm, her left leg, Leah wasn't quite sure.

Her mom recovered, of course. Eventually. But she was never really the same. She was harder. Fiercer. There was something within her which had broken and couldn't be repaired.

Sue is not drifting now. She's just . . . not there. She moves when Leah tells her to, she eats, she drinks, but otherwise she hasn't spoken. She hasn't cried, hasn't slept. She's not even said a word to Billy, who perhaps understands better than anyone here what she is feeling.

After it had happened, Billy was there. And like Sam, he's hardly left since. Neither has Charlie, or even the whole Reservation it seems. Everyone except Seth, and those who are still trying to coax him out of that cave Sam said he's hidden himself within somewhere far, far away. Somewhere instead of being here. His seat on the other side of Sue remains empty; nobody has dared to remove the reservation sign.

Leah doesn't care if they do. She doesn't care about any of them — not her tribe, not the elder, not herself. She doesn't care about anyone or anything except for her mom, who hasn't said a word since her dad's heart gave out and Seth ripped the front door off its hinges as he struggled to escape only moments after.

He hasn't been seen since.

Not on two legs, anyway.

It's not that she blames Seth. Her dad had never really taken care of himself like he really needed to. He'd had a bad heart since before she was born — since he was a kid himself. But her brother exploding into a fucking wolf in the middle of the living room hadn't exactly done any of them a favour, let alone her father.

Leah wonders where her brother is now, wonders if he's still there. She wonders who is looking after him, because the last time she saw him . . . She will never forget that look on his face right before . . . no, she won't — _can't_ think about that now. She'll have to face up to it soon. Just not now.

Not now, but after. After she thanks the elder, who is lamenting in Quileute about life, love, about death and despair. After she accepts his condolences, his wisdom, though she'll not understand any of it. She'll murmur in the right places, nod her head, try her best to remember what the old man says to her . . . even though she can't even remember whose family he belongs to. She's known him all her life.

What the hell is his name?

Leah looks around the congregation as if she'll find the answer in the faces behind her, but everything's passing in a blur and her attention is wholly elsewhere. It feels as if she's ten steps behind everyone else, struggling to catch up, her head foggy and body aching because she hasn't slept in two days.

Sam is two rows behind.

(Asshole.)

Beside him is Jared, and on the other side sits Emily.

(Bitch.)

Paul is there, too. At least that's something — that he's not watching over Seth, because Lahote isn't known for his sympathy, his kindness. Seth is petrified of the older boy. And yet . . . when Paul catches her dry eyes, his own look uncharacteristically soft.

She turns away from him. She can't bear more than her mom's sadness right now. She's barely managing her own.

That's not all of them, though. She recognises all of Sam's new cadre only by their short hair and their sharp jawlines, by the way their gigantic frames tower over everybody else even when sitting down. Everyone else who is not privy to the secret she has now been brought into.

Leah had thought that all the boys were on steroids when she'd first seen them. Before she'd known. They all look older, leaner. Even Jacob, who sits between Billy and Charlie with his head bowed, appears much older than his sixteen years.

Billy puts his hand on Jake's arm, and it has Leah wondering whether they are remembering the day they buried Sarah. Whether Jake wishes his sisters were here as much as she does.

Leah hasn't heard from Rebecca since a month after she got married, and she hasn't seen Rachel since before she started college. But she misses them, her sisters in all but blood. And she's angry at them for not being here for her, with her, like she has always been there for them. Leah's mom might need her, but she needs them.

When she finally looks away, everything seems to happen all at once. The tribal elder steps down, the pallbearers step up: her uncles Michael and Lucas, behind Jacob in his father's stead, and Quil in his grandfather's. At the back are Charlie and . . . Paul.

Leah sags. The relief she feels that it's not Sam holding her father up in these final moments is crippling. He was only holding her up not too long ago in her kitchen.

(It doesn't change a goddamn thing, she reminds herself.)

And yet, as soon as relief registers, it's gone. Fleeting, forgotten. Because it's not Paul or Sam who are supposed to be carrying Harry. It's Seth. Seth is meant to be where Paul stands.

She pulls her mom up, and they follow the coffin. They walk past the whole tribe, hand in hand, row by row, Billy trailing them. It seems as if everyone is here for Harry Clearwater, saying their final goodbyes, grieving.

As Leah and her mom pass the third row, Emily reaches out to her.

Leah pretends not to notice. She pretends not to notice the tears streaming down her cousin-almost-sister's face, or how Sam's hands are on Emily's shoulders. Holding her, loving her.

Asshole. Bitch.

* * *

The day of, Sam had stuck to his promise. He turned up as she'd asked, clean, shaven, and wearing his best shirt. Despite his sadness, his anger, that rage which Leah did not understand, Sam had a smile plastered on his face and was ready to stand next to her and hold her hand.

She loved him for that.

She met him at the door and kissed him silly. Her family were gathered in the backyard, waiting, though she wasn't bothered if they saw the way she ran her hands through his too-short hair, or if they heard the way he moaned against her lips.

Before long, Sam pulled away. He tapped her nose. _Behave_.

She grinned triumphantly — she loved the effect she had on him — and took his hand. _Come on. They're all here._

He squeezed her fingers and let her lead the way into the yard.

He left less than five minutes later. Leah didn't see him again for days and days and days.

Up until then, whether it was someone she knew or someone in a movie, Leah had always laughed at the person who played sad music because they thought it was genuinely speaking to their broken-heart and their broken-heart alone. Nobody else's, because the song had been written just for them and that moment.

She mocked the person who sobbed as they ripped up photographs of their ex-boyfriend.

She scoffed at the person who stared in the mirror, comparing themselves to another. The person who wondered what they were lacking that the other was not.

It was unbelievably dramatic.

Yet, the day after, there she was, in her room, playing the sad music. She ripped up photographs (and then burned them). She stared at her reflection in the mirror. And as her dad was yelling at her about fire and danger and _What the hell were you thinking!_ Leah realised with a hint of horror that she was that kind of person now.

She hated it.

* * *

She's the last to leave the graveside. She stands there long after her dad is in the ground, until others arrive with their shovels and wait for her to go.

He would hate it, she thinks. Her dad. He'd seriously hate all of it. The service, the crying, the way his family's life has come to a ground-breaking halt without him.

He'd hate that she's still standing here, waiting for something that will never happen, waiting for people to leave her house where they have gathered to mourn and pay their respects for just that little bit longer.

(She's still here because she can't face them. The groundsmen can cough and fidget all they want — she's not going anywhere. Not yet.)

But after that they'll leave. Probably when Billy clears his throat and makes some pointed remark about privacy. They will all leave and go get on with their lives.

Leah just isn't sure if she can do the same.


	3. two

_**A/N:**_ _Hello, hello. This fic has had a revamp (excuse the poor choice of word, ick), so if you've been notified of this chapter please re-read the page previous. I've missed you crazies._

* * *

 _you think you know all about it / then it seems you are wrong_  
 _Seafret, "Wildfire"_

* * *

 **two.**

* * *

The rows of chairs are filled with Harry Clearwater's loved ones. And where they cannot sit, they stand. They line the walls, the aisles, standing wherever they might be able to hear Old Quil's gravelly tones.

Jacob listens to every word. He doesn't remember much about his mom's funeral, but he will make damn sure he remembers Harry's.

He will remember arriving within minutes, if not seconds to spare. He was just in time to help carry the coffin into the hall, past the rows and rows of people, past Sue and Leah and the only empty chair in the hall which has been left for Seth.

(It had been a _Really Bad Idea_ to go and see Bella this morning. Embry and Jared had tagged along with him in the Rabbit to make sure that he didn't do something he would end up regretting, to make sure that he came back to the tribe who need him today.)

He will remember Leah holding her mother up without her brother, just as he holds his father up without his sisters. Billy is insistent that he will stand for his best friend when there are old Quileute songs to be sung. And so Jacob helps him to his feet each time and keeps him upright for as long as his father needs.

He will remember Charlie crying quietly on the other side of him. He will remember putting a hand on Charlie's shoulder to comfort him, knowing that things were only going to be a thousand times worse for the older man when he went home to an empty house.

(Jake had begged — _begged_ — Bella to stay. For him, for Charlie. That part, he does not want to remember.)

He will remember lifting Harry up and then lowering him into the ground.

He will remember Sue being picked up and carried by Sam, away from her husband's graveside with the Pack trailing closely behind, all the way to the Clearwaters' house.

He will remember Leah, her head bowed, refusing to follow.

And, above all, Jacob will remember the exact moment his heart stopped beating for Bella Swan.

* * *

Two days prior, after leaving a shivering and already near-dead Bella to face her fate with the bloodsuckers (who had reappeared out of who-knows-fuckin'-where, probably to try and shatter the last piece of her heart which he had spent the last several months trying to save), Jacob had sworn to himself that he would let at _least_ twenty-four hours pass before he went crawling back to her.

It was hell. But he'd suffered worse. And when he caught himself so much as looking in the direction of Forks, Jacob tried to remind himself over and over and over again that Bella had made her choice.

 _There's a vampire in your house, and you_ want _to go back?_

 _Of course,_ she'd replied.

Of course.

So he'd left her, hating himself. But treaty or no treaty, right or wrong, she had _wanted_ to be left even though she knew he wasn't able to stay with her. Instead he had sprinted back to La Push and he'd let Sam know that the leeches were back. He'd told Sam that if Bella got bit then they all knew who to blame.

And then he'd called her.

(That did _not_ count as crawling back to her, Jake told himself, but he'd needed to know if they'd taken a good chunk out of her already. Because that meant _he_ could finally take a chunk out of _them_.)

He half-wished she'd never answered. She sounded . . . different. Alive. More than she had in months, actually, and it had made Jake feel so sick that he'd slammed the phone down and retched into the kitchen sink. He'd barely gotten out of the house in time before shedding his skin, barrelling into the shared pain and anguish of the Pack as they mourned Harry with their newest brother.

As if things hadn't been bad enough.

He'd spent that evening, and that whole night, unsuccessfully coaxing Seth out of the cave the kid had found solace in. Then, he went home and cleaned the garage from top to bottom — all before the sun rose. And when he was done with that, he yanked out the Rabbit's seven-week old timing belt just so that he could keep his hands busy by fixing it. And when he was done with _that,_ Sam came looking for him. Jake was almost surprised that it had taken the bastard as long as it had.

 _I need to get back to Sue's,_ said Sam flatly. He was not at all sympathetic about the latest rejection Jacob had faced. Then again, the Alpha's patience had long since reached its limit when it came to Bella Swan and her love for the bloodsuckers. _You're back in charge of Seth._

Jacob simply stared at Sam as he tipped his toolbox upside down. He tried not to seem too pleased with himself when hundreds of nuts and bolts found their way into the deepest corners of the garage. It would take _ages_ to tidy up.

 _I'm busy._

Neither had he slept yet, and his eyes were burning.

 _Unless you want to help Leah peel her mother off the floor, then you_ will _look after her brother, Jacob. He is_ your _brother now too, and he needs our help._

As Sam spoke, the hard tremor of the Alpha's voice slipped through the cracks. Levi Uley's great-grandson made a conscious effort to not challenge Ephraim Black's great-grandson if he could help it, and in turn, Ephraim Black's great-grandson tried very hard to not fight the authority he had refused to accept for himself. Anything else usually ended in bloodshed.

But, right then — while his brothers would have long since ducked their gaze — Jacob's heart was thundering with rage, misery, topped with a little bit of something else familiar, and he could not help but glare right back at his Alpha.

It was in his blood. Jake's wolf reared at the challenge Sam presented every single day. And every single day he leashed that animal inside of him and refused to give in. He would never give in. He would never be Alpha.

That was what made him look away, in the end. That was what always made him look away.

(Once, a few days after his first phase when the Pack had all been adjusting to the new dynamic, Jacob had challenged Sam's authority without even thinking about what he was doing. It was an instinct he'd not known he had, and so Sam had beaten his ass into the next week until that new instinct had been all but extinguished. Until Jacob had yielded.

It was still there, though. It would always be there.)

Jacob scowled and, hating himself for it, while hating Sam for everything else, he put down his toolbox before stomping out of the garage and back to Seth's cave.

* * *

There aren't many people left at the Clearwater's place.

Old Quil excused himself early, taking his moody grandson with him. Although Quil is way more than simply _moody_ to those in the know — he is _fuming;_ he still believes his best friends have turned their back on him to join Sam, after all, so there's been a permanent scowl etched into his face all day. But he's also hot to the touch, so Jake knows that his best friend's anger will not last for much longer.

It's not that Jake wants Quil to phase, it's just things are going to be _so much easier_ when he does. It's not as easy being hated by a loved one as Sam makes out it is.

Sam knows all about being hated. Nevertheless, he's still here, flanked by Jared and Kim — not Emily, who had fled as soon as the service had finished. Meanwhile Paul is out swapping Seth-sitting duties with Embry.

Charlie is still here, too. Jake had very quickly and very quietly told Billy what was going on as he'd wheeled him away from the graveside, and they've both been trying to keep Charlie with them for as long as possible since. He'd never forgive them if he knew, but Billy and Jake remember how Charlie had been the last time Bella skipped town.

It's only when the Pack are beginning to help tidy the house, clearing plates and glasses and boxing up the food that Leah finally comes home.

Jacob looks up, and his world just . . . _shifts_ a little.

It's almost as if the earth has titled a fraction of a degree — not enough for anyone else to realise, but enough that Jacob is left feeling as if the wind has been knocked right out of him. He reaches out to hold onto the back of his father's chair so that his legs don't give way beneath him, holds so tightly that he's probably made a new shape out of the handlebars.

Leah's wet eyes blink at him from where she's appeared in the doorway. And after regaining her focus, she gives him a funny, tentative little smile. It doesn't look right on her pale, tired face; it's forced, a little bit mangled, and yet Jacob just _knows_ what's she trying to say — what she really means. That twisted quirk of her lips tells him that she's not okay, but she's trying to be, because what else can she do?

He knows that look. It's one of his own.

When he doesn't smile back, Leah's face slowly falls back into a picture of exhaustion. He knows that look, too, and it's not even because the legends demand it must be so. It's because he and his sisters looked exactly the same when their mother died.

Another second passes, and Leah sticks out her bottom lip ever so slightly. She probably doesn't even know she's doing it. Then she sighs and walks away, further into the house, away from him and his thundering heart.

A shift. A fraction of a degree different.

And nobody's noticed a thing.

* * *

 _Please, Bella. I'm begging._

 _Jake, I_ have _to—_

 _You don't, though. You really don't. You could stay here with me. You could stay alive. For Charlie. For me._

Bella shook her head when the leech revved the engine. She pulled her arm free and he let her go.

 _Don't die, Bella. Don't go. Don't._

Bella sobbed and threw herself at him, hugging his waist and pressing her tears into his burning chest. Jake held the back of her head, keeping her close.

 _Bye, Jake._ She pulled away after only a moment, kissed his palm. She wouldn't _—_ couldn't _—_ meet his eyes. If she had, he thought, she might have stayed. Because he knew her better than anyone else, knew how to break that resolve of hers, that thinking-too-hard look. _Sorry,_ she said.

Jacob left before she did.

* * *

Leah's in the kitchen, gripping onto the edge of the old breakfast bar and breathing hard.

Her head snaps up at the same time as her defences, eyes hard and her brow set. It takes longer than it should, longer than he'd like, but eventually she closes her eyes again and drops her head, dismissing him as a threat. Her long, loose hair falls around her and hides everything else.

"Sorry, I didn't mean—"

"I thought they'd be gone by now," she says from underneath her dark shield.

Despite himself, despite this new . . . thing, Jacob is smart enough to keep his distance and stay near the door. No matter how sad she is, no matter how angry, no matter how much he wants to reach out. He likes to think that he'd have to check himself and his instincts to comfort her without having imprinted — his human instincts, not wolf — but he can't say for certain. And he hates that.

He's changed so much that he barely recognises himself lately. Changed so much, lost so much. And this one thing was the last bit he had of himself, the last shred of free will, but now he's surrendered that too. It's not just Sam who rules his life now.

He knows it's the imprint talking when he can't be mad about it. The imprint is quelling his resentment and masking it as something else entirely.

"Can you—" Leah takes a shaky breath. Somehow she seems to stoop a little lower to the floor despite holding onto the counter as if everything depends on it. "Can you ask them to—"

"Sure. Will you be—"

"I'll be fine. I just need him — them," she quickly corrects herself, but Jacob knows who she means. "I need them to go."

"I get it." He really, really does. And he can do this. He can. He can walk away and do whatever she needs, even if it's only to go back and tell them all to hurry up. He'll clear up the last of the food himself, wash plates and pick up the rubbish so that it's one last thing she has to do right now. And if she asks him to leave too . . . Well, he'll try.

"Jacob."

His wolf sings, turning him back without a thought. "Yeah?"

"Are you . . . Do you . . ." Leah pushes herself away from the counter and waves a hand at him, looking a little ill. There are shadows in her brown eyes which only he has a hope of understanding with both his mom and Harry gone. "Y'know. Are you the same as Seth?"

"Yeah."

"And Sam?"

Shit, Sam. Sam's going to fucking kill him.

Sam's looked at all of his brothers at some point and wondered what he'd do if any of them imprinted on his ex-girlfriend. They'd all seen the underlying panic, had felt their Alpha's fear as if it had been their own.

(That's just the way things are now. Their pain, his pain. Their joy, his joy. Sometimes Jacob dreams of Emily on top of him, dreams of Kim holding his hand.)

Only when Jared imprinted did Sam's breathing seem to loosen slightly, that pressure easing. But it hadn't meant they'd forgotten being aware of how Sam had hated them when he'd looked at them, even if had been for just for a second.

Yes, Sam's going to kill him. But Jacob steels himself and says, "I really think he should be the one to tell you that."

The words pain him to say, almost as much as it does to think about leaving her on her own for the rest of the night. He knows it's not really Sam's responsibility to divulge this secret — at least, not anymore. It's his, whether he likes that or not. But he's not ready for Sam to rip his throat out just yet. Not today. Not ever.

"He tried," Leah admits quietly, pushing her curtain of hair back from her face. Her fingers are surprisingly steady compared to the rest of her. "I think. I don't know. Lots of people have tried to do something, say something today. And I didn't really let them."

"I can ask him to—"

"No," she says too quickly. Her eyes flare with sudden life as quickly as it dies. "Not him. You. You tell me."

They stare at each other a moment, which is all it takes for Jacob to relent. His shoulders drop. "Yeah. Sam's the same. Jared, Embry and Paul, too," he tells her, aware that he's only confirming everything she already knows, everything that she's probably already thought. It's just nobody has said it aloud to her yet.

Leah nods, but she doesn't look away. "No girls?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Jake admits. It's not like he's not thought about it. He'd been scared for his sisters, but then they hadn't been home in forever so there was nothing to worry about, was there? And none of the other girls on the Rez seemed to be burning up or had to duck when they went through a door, so it wasn't likely.

"Not Emily?"

"She's . . ." God help him. "No. She's not."

Leah doesn't look like she believes him, scoffing as she finally turns away and reaches for an empty glass on the draining board. She turns the tap on with a bit more force than necessary. "Is my mom upstairs?"

Jake's about to tell her that Sam carried Sue all the way back here and put her to bed when Sam himself appears, as if called. Jake can feel his Alpha at his back, that disapproval which seems to radiate off him all the fucking time.

"Jacob," Sam says, voice hard. Of course, he's heard every word his Second and Leah have said to one another. "You've no right."

Very slowly, very deliberately, Jacob turns round. He's exactly the same height as Sam, unlike the rest of their brothers who are all an inch or two shorter. Maybe if he were Alpha he would be taller, but since he refuses he's going to have to settle with being able to stare right into his brother's eyes rather than down into them.

Sam's frown deepens. There's that disapproval.

"Who are you to tell him what he can and can't do?" Leah demands from behind him, but neither Jacob or Sam look at her. They hold each other's stare, and Jacob vaguely thinks that he needs to stop his hands from shaking, stop his whole body vibrating in response to the challenge Sam will always present. He won't phase, can't phase, because if he phases then Sam is going to know exactly what he's done.

It's that thought which makes Jacob break first. He always breaks first. He ducks his head and steps to the side, allowing Sam to pass.

"Save it," Leah says in response to whatever she sees in Sam's face. She pushes past him, stalks past Jacob, and disappears upstairs.

Sam instantly rounds on him. "What have you done?"


	4. three

_there's still a fire in my heart, my darling / but i'm not burning for you  
Rhodes (ft. Birdy), "Let It All Go"_

* * *

 **three.**

* * *

If there was one female in the world who could be a wolf, Sam thinks, it would be Leah.

She stalks around her bedroom, kicking off her shoes and shrugging out of her dress as she goes, looking absolutely feral. Her long, black hair swishes behind her with every movement, grazing the small of her naked back, wild and untamed as the rest of her.

He stands just beyond the threshold of her room, but she doesn't shut the door, doesn't slam it in his face. Because that would mean that she has to acknowledge him, which she has so very pointedly been trying not to do since she'd prised herself away from him in her kitchen earlier that morning. But she knows he's there, of course, and parades around her room in nothing but her mismatched underwear with a type of anger he's only just begun to learn from this side of the fence. There's a line between them now, which has done nothing but grow since he left her.

He's not stupid. He knows everything he had with Leah is dead with no hope of revival, because he will never betray Emily or the imprint. That, and Leah would never take him back even if he were somehow able to refuse fate. She's too stubborn and will never, ever forgive him. This line will just keep growing and growing. But she's in on this now. Minus a tail, she's all but part of his pack of ragtag teenagers.

He hadn't ever considered or entertained the idea of her knowing his secret. He'd resigned himself to a life of murderous looks from her, the tribe behind her and forever whispering behind his back. A life of people looking at Emily as if she's a homewrecker and as if he's no better than his father.

Then fourteen-year-old Seth had phased unexpectedly. It had been a miracle that he'd shredded the carpet and the door rather than his family, from what Sam has seen from the kid's mind.

Harry and Sue he would have been able to deal with. Harry is — _was_ part of the Council. With Billy and Old Quil, Mr. Clearwater had been the one to sit him down and explain everything after he'd phased for the first time. Sam would never forget it. And, naturally, Harry didn't keep things from Sue, who had Uley blood and seemed to know everything about everyone anyway. But Leah . . .

"Jacob shouldn't have told you like that," Sam says to her back. Jacob knows it, too. He'd sloped off without so much as a word, hadn't even bothered to defend himself after Leah had pushed past them. Sam is still undecided on whether that was a wise decision or not, but he'd not pushed it. Later. He'd deal with it later, like everything else he's put on the back burner.

"At least he _has_ told me," Leah snaps back. "Which is a lot more than I can say for _you_."

Then — with no misguided illusions about what she's doing, he's sure — she bends down and bares her ass to him as she roots around in her bottom drawers for some pants. The glass of water which she's brought from downstairs threatens to topple over on top of her dresser with the force of slamming drawers.

Of course, Leah doesn't know that what she's trying to do isn't working. It will never work.

It's strange to be so unaffected by her now, compared to a time when he would have grabbed her hips and held her close. Now the wolf inside of him barks in protest with what it sees and forces his eyes elsewhere . . . but all the things in this room are a stark reminder of everything the wolf tells him is _Wrong_. Everything here is from the last three, four years of his life. Everywhere he looks calls to him with familiarity. He's climbed through that window, slept in that bed . . .

He trains his eyes on Leah's bare feet as they move. The imprint is only somewhat mollified — it won't settle until he's back with Emily, but he's got no choice. He has to be _here_ , not _there_. He has to tell Leah how important all of this is. It's his responsibility.

"Because you have done everything you can to not have that conversation," Leah continues, her voice rising with every word. "But it's over now, he's in the ground, gone. It's done. So whatever you're waiting for . . ." She huffs angrily as she shimmies into threadbare shorts, the kind she lounges around in whether the sun's out or not. "It's _done_ ," she says again.

Sam looks up, and she's staring right at him, eyes blazing.

He sighs, relenting after half a minute. He runs a hand over his tired face. "Please put a shirt on."

"Bothering you, is it?" She puts her hands on her hips, subtly jutting her chest out.

"Please, Lee. Today's been hard enough. I wanted to wait 'til all this was over."

Leah barks a laugh, a hard, unkind and frustrated sound as she turns away and reaches into her wardrobe and yanks a t-shirt off its hanger. She's a whirlwind in this space, moving so fast that once upon a time he would have had a hard time keeping up.

"Things were hard before," she says. "You didn't tell me then. You don't get to decide for me. Not ever."

He has never decided things for her, but he doesn't remind her of that. He's unused to this rage she has. He knows it's all because of him and losing Harry, maybe because she's had to deal with all of this without her brother, but still he struggles.

"If I want to know, Sam—" she spits his name "—it won't be on your terms."

That straightens his back. "It has to be on my terms."

This is the Alpha talking, not Sam Uley, not his imprint.

"You think too highly of yourself," Leah utters scornfully.

"There's rules, Leah. I need to keep everyone safe." Anything else is unacceptable.

"Why's it your responsibility all of a sudden?" she demands, pulling down her shirt and immediately reaching for her hair. "Why are you suddenly deciding who can and can't know what? Telling Jacob what he can and can't tell me? The legends might be true — _fine_ ," she concedes at his look. "They _are_ true, but you're not Taha fucking Aki, Sam."

He takes a deep breath, one, two. Her words sting, but she's not to know about the fight he and Jacob are having every single day. He's all but killing himself holding onto something that Jacob doesn't want, something that he's offered to Jacob more than once, and although Jacob has refused he has been subconsciously challenging him for it every single damn day since he phased.

"I'm the leader of this pack."

Leah rolls her eyes with a snort as she ties her hair back. "Pack."

"Yes, Leah. Pack. Which Seth is now part of—" she flinches at her brother's name, the only slip in her otherwise fiery facade "—whether you like it or not. You weren't meant to know about any of this, but now you do, and I've got to work around it."

"Sorry I'm such an inconvenience," she snaps.

He can't help the roll of his eyes. "You know that's not what I meant."

"Do I?" Leah flicks her high ponytail over her shoulder. It brings out the sharp lines in her face more than ever. "This morning was a mistake," she tells him, finding her resolve again. "I won't be so _inconvenient_ again."

"God, Leah. You're not an inconvenience!" He throws up his arms which are in danger of shaking — he's letting his temper get the better of him. "I just meant that not everyone can know about this!" he hisses. He's mindful of who is left downstairs. Most who came back to the house have left, but there's still keen wolf ears and Charlie Swan and who-knows-who else.

Leah scowls. "I'm not going to tell anyone, if that's all you're worried about. I think everyone who I might have wanted to tell knows anyway. One of them is in that room." She points over his shoulder. "So if you'll excuse me."

He has to tell her more. He's not going to get away with keeping her in the dark, knows that things are only going to spiral that much more out of control when she finds out the rest, but maybe — maybe hard truths can wait. He didn't want to do this today anyway.

"Fine." He moves out of the way. "I just wanted to see if you needed anything before I go."

"Back to Emily."

He wants to say yes — yes, Emily, always Emily, but knows no good will come of it so simply nods his head and watches as Leah takes the glass of water off her dresser and disappears behind her mom's door with it.

* * *

That morning, he'd caught Leah as she'd crumpled to her knees in her kitchen. She'd fought him, at first, telling him over and over again that she was not his problem, sobs wracking her body as she cried her protests and obscenities until they finally dissolved into something which had her gripping the lapels of his ill-fitting suit. So he'd held on to her, because it was the break he'd been waiting for since that first night after he'd brought her and Sue back from the hospital.

He had known that Leah would rather cry in the confines of her kitchen with nobody else to hear her rather than in front of her father's coffin with an audience. He still _knew_ her. That was why he'd pushed her too far. He had let himself into her house before she'd gotten out of bed and had followed her around all morning, pushing and pushing.

Leah had always been tough. But she'd become a little rough around the edges since he had left her on Third Beach and broken her heart. She worked differently now.

 _Is this about college?_ she had asked that day. _I know I've been a little nervous, but it's only because—_

 _It's not. I'm not going to college anymore. I can't._ He couldn't even leave the Rez without his skin itching, almost as if reminding him of what _—_ who _—_ he was leaving behind unprotected. _I know you don't understand. And maybe you won't ever understand,_ he'd said, almost to himself as he stared above her head, anywhere but her already tear-stained face. _I'm still having trouble with it. But I know I don't feel the same anymore. **I'm** not the same._

 _Nothing's changed—_

 _It has. Everything has. I'm sorry._

He'd repeated that same word to her on the kitchen floor as he had on the stillness of Third Beach. _Sorry._ _Sorry. Sorry._

It hadn't made anything better. It would never make it better, no many how many times he said it. To Leah, to Emily's scarred and lovely face. To his brothers, who understood just as much of this new world as he did, though he did his best to pretend otherwise. Sometimes it even worked.

Since Harry had died, Sam had found himself treating Leah as pack because she resembled his brothers so much. Her anger at everything, the sharp bite to her words. He'd reached for her a few times, if only to check that her temperature was normal and that her heart rate was steady. But she was still Leah. Mostly. Thankfully. She didn't feel warm to him, like only Emily and his brothers did these days.

Eventually she'd wormed herself out of his arms, had stood on her shaky legs and pushed him away. She'd swiped erratically at her wet, flushed face and muttered that she needed to get ready.

 _We've got a while yet, Lee._

 _I'm late_. _I've got to get ready,_ she'd mumbled again. _Leave me alone._

He'd not really left either her or Seth alone since the kid had phased and hidden away. He wouldn't make it to the funeral. Hell, Jared had taken three days to get himself back on two legs. Sam was almost sure that Seth was going to take even longer.

 _Please go,_ she'd then asked quietly, and he hadn't been able to help but remember that she'd asked the same of him on Third Beach. Maybe she had remembered, too.

* * *

Only his pack greet him when he jumps the last stair, anger fuelling his every move.

Except for Jacob, whose eyes are still downcast, they look at him and wait to be told what to do next. They all can't help but listen, though, to Billy and Charlie who are talking in quiet whispers on the other side of the door. The door which is still broken, courtesy of Seth.

Sam makes a note to fix it next time he's here. "Everyone else gone?" he asks the room.

"Jacob herded them all out," Jared says.

Sam's gaze turns on his tallest brother. He can't admonish him, he supposes. Leah _had_ asked him to clear the house — they all heard her. "Good. You should tell Charlie about Bella before he goes home, Jacob."

Jake grunts noncommittally. Hell, Sam needs to get better with his directives. Jacob is always finding loopholes.

"Go and tell Charlie. _Now_ ," Sam orders. He makes for the living room, not waiting to watch the boy slope off. "The rest of you, come and clean this up. I'll do the kitchen."

He can feel all of them behind him. Embry's hunger, having not eaten since before he'd left to watch over Seth. Jared's longing for Kim, the imprint still so new compared to his own with Emily. And, somewhere far away, Seth's heartbreak and Paul's frustration. Probably because he's babysitting. Then there's Jacob's . . . whatever _that_ is. Jacob is a total freakin' mess. He's all longing and uncertainty and sadness and confusion and nerves. It spills over with his misery and angst over Bella fucking Swan.

Always Bella fucking Swan. A skinny pale wreck of a thing, nothing but a walking nightmare of complications, and always, _always_ undoubtedly the source of any kind of pain Jacob was feeling. But she's not Sam's problem anymore, because the leeches are back. Well — one of them. But the rest are sure to follow, of that Sam has no doubt. He'll soon have more than Seth phasing to worry about — half of his pack will be thirteen, fourteen-year-old kids before he knows it when the leeches come back to Washington in full force.

Not if. When. The certainty has been constantly nagging him at the back of his mind since Jake brought him up to speed, all the way through the service. And the fact is that, _when_ the leeches come back, the pack will have far too much territory to cover. On its own, the boundary line defined by the treaty — the single line between their land and Leech Land — is fifty miles long. Fifty miles for six of them.

As if the redhead isn't enough. As if Quil being a second away from becoming a new weight in Sam's heart isn't enough.

Because Sam can feel Quil, too. The sensation is like an itch he can't get to just yet, his anticipation steadily building. He'd wanted to crawl out of his own skin by the time Jacob had finally phased. Quil won't take as long.

Sam listens to Embry and Jared as he moves about the kitchen, hands busy as he contemplates everything. It sounds like they're eating everything in sight, but at least they're clearing up. Sort of.

"C'mon, man," Embry says around a mouthful. "You just saw her four hours ago!"

Jared grumbles, but whatever he's feeling only raises a similar yearning in response within Sam's own chest. _Emily, Emily, Emily._

It had taken more strength than he'd had to watch her walk away from the service and back to her little house — her grandmother's house, once, and now his too, he guessed. He spent far more time there than anyone else, barely went home to his own mom who was incoherent more than half the time. He only went back to pay the bills, to make sure there was food in the fridge. And that was only because Emily told him to. He would never have bothered otherwise. His mom has long since made it clear that he reminds her too much of his father, and she wants nothing to do with him. Especially since he's gotten a name for himself on the reservation by leaving Leah and all but moving in with her cousin.

Sudden yelling from outside lets Sam know that Jacob has done his job and told Charlie who his only child has run off with.

"Sounds like trouble," Jared mutters. He seems hopeful, though. As if it might get him back to Kim that more quickly, and that hope only jumps higher when an engine revs not too long before Billy is being wheeled back into the house by Jacob. Sam meets them in the hall, the kitchen clear of any evidence of a wake being held.

Billy sighs. The lines on his worn face seem deeper. "Good thing you didn't say anything about Italy, son. That girl is going to be the death . . ." He lets his words fade and glances warily towards the ceiling, where he knows Leah and Sue are. "Well," he says gruffly. "You know."

But Jacob's not listening, it seems. He stares up at the same spot on the ceiling as his father, his hands tight on the handlebars of the wheelchair.

Longing and uncertainty and sadness and confusion and nerves.

Sam frowns. What is _that_? "Jacob?"

"Are they asleep?" the boy asks, still looking up.

"Doubt it," Sam says. He would know. Their breathing might be even but Leah's not slept for more than two hours straight since Harry died, Sue probably even less so.

(He _has_ to get Seth home as soon as possible.)

Another sigh from Billy. "Let's leave them for tonight, kid. C'mon."

Something even Sam can't quite catch flashes over Jacob's face, pulling at his mouth. "We'll come back tomorrow?"

"Sure, sure."

Jake looks reluctant, but eventually jerks his head and starts wheeling his father out. Maybe it's because he's lost his mom, maybe it's because he needs to jump on another crusade to keep him busy whilst Bella is probably getting her throat ripped out. Sam isn't all too sure. He's hardly ever sure when it comes to Jacob. Too many problems, too difficult to even try and pick apart. Whatever this is, though — it's in danger of turning out to be yet one more problem.

Which, undoubtedly, will become _his_ problem, too. It always does. Emily and these ragtags are all he has.

"You're with Seth tonight," he reminds Jacob before he leaves. "Take over from Paul at ten."

And for once, Jacob only nods. No questions, no defiance, no snappy retorts.

Definitely a problem.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _Annnnnnddddd . . . that's just about the last chapter I ever want to write from Sam. I wonder how many of you I lost along the way(?!). But part one, two, three as each of them made sense at the time, I swear. It definitely does not count as a thank you for all of your lovely reviews. Thank you, thank you._


	5. four

_show me what i can't see when the spark in your eyes is gone  
Bring Me The Horizon, "Follow You"_

* * *

 **four.**

* * *

Jacob and Paul handover wordlessly. Sometimes it's better that they don't speak; they might be brothers, but their dislike for each other has reached new heights since Jacob took over as Sam's Second.

When Jared had been in the position by default, Paul was close to assuming it for himself before Jacob turned up. Not long after that (less than a day, in fact) Jacob had been offered the top spot, and when he'd hastily refused it Sam insisted that he at least take on second-in-command instead — if only because they all knew that anything less wouldn't have soothed Jacob's unbearable need to _take take take_.

Fucking bloodlines.

So Jared had stepped down, all too happily accepting Third instead, meaning that Paul's nose had been pushed further out of joint. It gets under his skin something fierce, that he'll never be given the chance to flank Sam's right side. It has his grey wolf loping off with a disdainful snort, refusing to look back.

Jacob lets it slide, wishing that the world was as easy-going as Embry as he usually tends to do when his most volatile brother is around, and he sits down at the mouth of the cave. The kid's in there, somewhere, whimpering and shivering. He can almost feel Seth's bones rattling, and knows that it's not from the cold which he cannot feel.

"Hey, kid."

Seth lets out a low whine into the night.

"Don't worry. Just figured you could do with some peace and quiet, is all," Jacob lies. The peace and quiet is for him, not for Seth, who is undoubtedly listening to the mindless hum of Embry's thoughts, the angry tint of Paul's. Poor kid. At midnight Jared will take over from Paul, and after an evening of having Kim underneath him he will probably make Seth so sick that it might even force a phase.

Here's hoping.

Jacob stretches his legs out over the uneven ground. Paul will probably rat him out to Sam about being on two legs the first chance he gets — not that any of them know why, though they will soon, and he's undoubtedly seven kinds of dead when they do. He won't be able to get away with not phasing for long. Soon he'll have to take a patrol or the redhead will show up again or Bella will come back with blood-coloured eyes . . .

It was an odd feeling when he'd told Charlie about her taking off with Alice. Like he'd cared, but not really — at least not like before, because his heartbeat is different now. _Le-ah, Le-ah, Le-ah_.

It's all wrong. He'd had a _plan_ with Bella, which is ruined beyond belief. He's imprinted, and she's been whisked away by that pixie of a leech. She's probably dead already. The thought of which doesn't have him pieces like it once would have. It doesn't have his heart in his ass like it was when she threw herself from that cliff.

Well, shit.

This imprint has sealed more than just his fate. Because whatever Leah chooses, _whoever_ she chooses, whether that's him or Sam's ghost or even nobody at all, Jacob's got about as much luck of turning his back on her as Sam's got of leaving Emily for her. And Bella . . . well, she can't have made _her_ decision any more clearer to the world than she has. She's not the type to pick herself, even Jacob knows that; it would have always been him or the leech. Now it's just the leech — that's the only option she'll see with him out of the picture. Being with a leech, becoming a leech.

Jake wonders whether he'll be able to look Charlie in the eye when he's forced to kill her. If the leeches break the treaty . . . if Bella becomes a threat to the reservation — to Leah — then she'll have to die. Again. He's got no choice.

The rational part of him knows that thinking like this, even considering it is not right. Bella is still human — for now. She is his father's best friend's daughter. She is _his_ best friend, and he loves her. Granted it's not in the same way anymore. Whatever he felt has twisted and morphed and bent into a love like the one he has for Rachel and Rebecca, but _still_. It's not right.

Or is it? The other part of him, the imprinted wolf part, vividly imagines tearing Bella's head off and howling victoriously.

It's sick, yeah. But if it ensures Leah's safety . . .

Jacob tears at his hair, his two bodies in a battle of wills, painfully conscious of the fact he's steadily losing sense of what is right and wrong. Maybe it's already gone.

Seth whimpers.

"S'alright, Seth," he replies with a ragged breath. "I'm alright." He straightens his back, if only because he knows that his other brothers will be able to see what Seth sees. "How are you doing? No. Scratch that. Stupid question."

A huff from the darkness.

"I know. Sorry."

Jacob pulls his knees up. He's just about settling in for a long, long night ahead of him when he hears Seth inching closer, crawling along slowly on his belly until he can be seen properly — at least by Jacob, with his new ability to see and smell from miles away. He's still adjusting to these heightened senses.

Seth's not quite at the cave's entrance, but it's closer than he's been since he scarpered into it. From here, even in the dead of night, Jacob can see the kid's tangled sandy-coloured coat and the hot breath escaping from his long muzzle. His paws are freakin' ginormous, nevermind the rest of him. He's like an oversized colt with shaggy hair, unsure of his footing.

"You need a haircut."

Seth bares his teeth.

"Yeah, I know. It sucks. I cried like a bitch when Sam cut my hair off." It had been his pride. "But you'll rip it out when you run and it'll hurt."

Seth holds Jacob's eyes as he lowers his head to the ground, in between those massive paws. He's trembling.

"Bet it feels like you'll never stop," Jacob tells him. He holds up his hand. "But it does, see? The shaking. Unless you get mad and lose control . . ." His hand drops. "That'll happen a lot. It gets better. Phasing back for the first time is the hardest bit."

The most important bit, as well as the hardest. It's the one time that an Alpha can't force a phase, because the body hasn't learnt how to do it yet. It's why Jared took three days to fall back on two feet and why Seth's been here for nearly as long. Thankfully he didn't go too far out. After he'd taken off he had mostly run around in circles, whereas Jacob had passed Sacramento his first time. Regardless, nothing else can happen until Seth decides that he's ready.

Jacob believes he's ready, though. He's got an extra pair of shorts because he's so sure of it.

This is the third time he's sat with the kid, the first time that he's not tried to coax Seth out mind-to-mind. It's a lot harder than he thought it would be, but he's going to hell if he lets Seth, of all people, hear his mind as it is right now.

"S'pose the guys have all been imparting their own bits of wisdom since I last saw you, huh?"

Seth huffs again at that, but Jake continues anyway. "Just take a breath, kid. Shut your eyes and tune them out. Think about what you want to do, what you want to be instead of focusing on what you _don't_ want to be. The rest will follow."

The sandy wolf keeps staring at him, body vibrating.

"It's alright. It'll come to you, I know it."

* * *

Eventually it does. An hour or so later, the wind is whipping at Jacob's ears, bitingly cold to somebody who might be able to feel it, when Seth's form on the rocks starts blurring. He's trying to phase, willing himself to shed this second skin. He whimpers and whines, grunts and growls, but — there, there's the patch of skin Jacob's been waiting for. It's quickly consumed with fur again as he coalesces back into his wolf, but Jacob will take what he can get. It won't be long now.

There's nothing worse than an audience than somebody blathering on pointlessly to fill the silence. Jacob can't do much about the first part, so he keeps quiet and occasionally turns his eyes to the moon, acting as if he's got all the time in the world.

As if something's not calling him to go back, to leave his post and—

It's fine. He'll wait.

* * *

Another hour. Two. More skin, appearing and disappearing, taking longer and longer each time until finally, finally Seth is sprawled face-down and naked on the rocky ground, gasping for breath. Jacob is at his side instantly.

Far in the distance, howls immediately fill the air. Embry and Jared. They'll wake Sam and Paul, though they don't care about that. They're happy, and Jacob lets himself smile even as Seth moans from underneath his blanket of wayward hair.

"Hey. Hey. You're fine. You did real good, Seth. Real good." But he needs to keep the momentum going, keep himself in the here and now, so Jacob says, "Come on, up you get. You'll catch a cold." Not likely. "Come on."

He wrangles Seth into the pair of shorts he's brought with him and stands him on his unsteady feet.

"My fault," the kid mumbles over and over through his clacking teeth. "All my fault."

"Hold on to me. We're gonna walk, 'kay?"

"It's my fault."

"Seth, focus." It's not quite an order, but Jacob is Second and Sam's not here. He doesn't like doing it, but he can force what he needs if he decides. Seth needs direction. "Work with me," he says more gently. "One foot after the other. Easy does it."

Seth's knees wobble with effort. "I can't."

"Sure you can." Jacob pulls Seth's arm up and over his shoulders, and slowly but surely Seth starts walking. "Good. Let's go."

It's a only a two hour walk south back to the reservation. Now is as good of a time as any to start Wolf 101. And with every passing mile, "It's my fault, all my fault," turns into questions as Seth is drawn back to reality. He asks about his mom, Leah. Then Sam, and Paul, all of his new brothers.

He never asks about Harry.

* * *

" . . . giving us the runaround since, but I think she's caught on that the others turned up. Well — one of them at least. We haven't picked up a trail for a few days," Jacob explains as they walk through the reservation. Seth is walking on his own now. "She'll be back, though. Probably."

"Because she wants to eat Bella."

"Yeah. Mate for mate, or something."

"Which wasn't the leech with the dreadlocks you said you killed."

Just over two weeks ago. It feels like two months, two years even, not mere _weeks_. He had emptied his guts afterwards until there'd been nothing left and it'd not just been because Bella had been a hair's breadth from piercing, venomous teeth.

"No."

Seth nods. He's getting it now his head is his own again. "Do you think she'll come back? Bella? I mean . . ." He looks a bit awkward, and Jacob realises that the kid thinks he's got his pants in a twist over her still. After all, he hasn't heard any differently. "I wouldn't come back, if something like that was after me."

"If she survives whatever it is she's gone off to . . ."

 _There's a very good chance that they will eliminate us all,_ the small and strange leech had said very casually to Bella. Too casual for his own liking. _Though in your case it won't be punishment so much as dinnertime._

"Then yeah. She'll come back."

Things will either become exponentially harder or easier when she does. It doesn't feel like there will be an in between. There never had been for him with Bella.

Seth frowns. "But she'll bring back all the other vampires when she does."

"Yep," Jake replies, lips popping.

"But that . . . _that's so_ _unfair!_ " Seth suddenly explodes, and despite himself Jacob takes a few long strides away from the boy who has begun to blur around the edges.

He splays his hands in surrender as Seth takes deep, gulping breaths, his body heaving. Jacob's own heart starts thundering at what might happen — at what _could_ happen. "Seth. If this is too much . . . If you can't deal, then you can't go home, okay? Not yet."

The idea of Seth exploding too close to Leah . . . Jacob can't stomach the thought. And Seth doesn't know that Jacob's now bound by some stupid sacred law to retaliate if Leah's ever hurt.

He's not sure he's got the stomach to kill her brother — his brother, now, too.

"What if I can't . . ." Seth's looks at his trembling fingers with undiluted horror before crossing his arms and burying his fists into his armpits. He swallows audibly and squeezes his eyes shut as he tries to regain control. "Jake, I might not be able to stop."

"You will. You won't hurt anyone." _You can't. Because if you do I'll have to hurt you._

"But . . ."

"You're fine, kid. Trust me." Jake crosses the distance and slings his arm over Seth's shoulders, pulling him close and ruffling his tangled hair. "You got this."

Seth cracks an eye open. He doesn't look like he believes him. Shit, Jacob doesn't believe himself, but he's gotta try.

"Well. Perhaps more night won't hurt, though, y'know? There's no shame in it. I've got a hammock in the garage."

Seth glances at the house across the road where his mom and Leah are sleeping. It's several minutes before he shakes his head, all of which Jacob feels like he's holding his breath.

"No. I can do it."

The kid will probably break if he thinks nobody believes in him, so Jacob says, "Alright," and does his best to sound more sure about it than he feels.

They walk along the pathway, through the door and up the stairs without incident. The door really needs to be looked at. It's not like anyone will try and break in; La Push tribal Officers have a near-perfect crime rate — _zero_ , especially since the most temperamental boys (Paul) have phased — but still . . . Jacob's nerves are shot to pieces as it is. He doesn't need to be worrying about an unlocked door to his imprint's house.

At the top of the stairs, Seth looks back and forth between his mother's and sister's doors.

Jacob clamps down on a rising challenge — it smells like Sam up here — and says quietly, "They're fine."

He chances a glance at one door in particular anyway, listening closely. It would be so, so easy to wedge it open and . . . What? Whisper her name, and freak her out? Yeah, no. She'll see the dirt Seth has trailed through the house soon enough. Until then, Jacob will let the kid sleep for a few hours before his family comes crashing down on him.

"C'mon, kid. Sleep time."

Seth doesn't move. "It was today, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

What little light is left in Seth's eyes vanishes. "I missed it."

"Yeah," Jacob says again. It's all he can say.

"They wouldn't show me. The others." Seth's shoulders drop impossibly lower. "Every time they thought about it, they stopped."

Another one of Sam's finest Alpha Orders. Not. But Jake doesn't tell Seth that. "It would have upset you. We had to get you back," he explains instead, pushing at Seth's back and herding him into his room. He doesn't want to answer anymore questions in the hallway, lest they wake Leah and Sue up. From the looks of them at the service today, the look of Leah when she came home, she and her mom have been getting even less sleep than the pack. "C'mon."

"What was it like?" the kid asks after Jacob's forced him to lie down on his unmade bed — which, Jacob can't help but notice, smells like Leah, as if she's lain upon it at some point in the last few days.

"Jake?" Seth prompts.

"It was . . ." Jacob tries not to breathe in through his nose and thinks of Sue's vacant eyes, of Leah's face at the graveside as she'd watched her dad being lowered into the ground. She'd not looked away, not even as her mom had been carried away by Sam. "Nice. It was real nice, Seth. Old Quil held the service."

"Did anyone read? My mom?"

"No. But your sister picked a poem, which Old Quil translated."

"Which one?"

Jacob blows a breath. The kid's clearly not going to get some rest until he knows. "If I tell you, will you go to sleep?"

Seth immediately shuts his eyes, and Jacob almost smiles. "Okay," he says then. This is the reason he'd paid such close attention, after all — not because he can barely remember his mom's funeral, but because he'd felt the weight of Sam's Order in his chest as Old Quil had droned on and on and he knew that it hadn't been fair. He hadn't wanted Seth to feel the same way about his dad's funeral as he feels about his mom's. That it was slowly being forgotten.

"Okay," Jacob says again. He has a wolf's memory now. He sits down on the carpet, his back against the wooden bed frame. "Do not stand at my—"

"Can you do it in Quileute?" Seth whispers. "Please."

Jacob tilts his head back to the ceiling and looks at the sunlight from outside which is starting to creep across it.

"Do not stand at my grave and weep," he begins again — in Quileute, this time. "I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain, the gentle autumn rain . . . When you awaken in the morning's hush, I am the swift uplifting rush — of quiet birds in circled flight, the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die."

Seth is quiet behind him, but Jacob can hear the tears that are there.

"She picked good," Seth says, his voice hoarse.

"Yeah. She did."

Seth falls asleep pretty quickly after that, but it's five minutes or so until Jacob is able to force himself to his feet and leave. Force himself to put one foot in front of the other as he had urged Seth to do, because it's the only way he's going to get out of this house and get Leah's scent out of his head before he does something that will be out of this world kind of stupid.

But she's there. Sitting just by Seth's door, head against the wall with her legs crossed and looking straight up at him. Her ponytail hangs limply to the side, loose and messy as she tilts her head and wisps of her hair fall over her face like she's been tossing and turning. A suspicion only confirmed by the way her shirt is crumpled and riding slightly up her back, exposing the smallest stretch of smooth skin. And those goddamned shorts she's wearing are—

Out of this world kind of stupid.

"I didn't hear you," is all Jacob can think to say, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Hairspray."

He gapes at her. Shit, shit, shit. "Huh?"

"For the hinges," Leah explains like it's obvious. "Stops them squeaking. Haven't you ever snuck out before?"

"No." He can't stop looking at that patch of skin. "But I guess it explains why Dad never caught Rach and Beck."

Leah snorts with the barest hint of a smile. "Who do you think bought the hairspray? _I_ didn't."

(He bets his sisters didn't think of spraying it over their doors, though. That's all Leah.)

"Was this around the time they turned my room into their hair salon?"

"Yeah. Think so," Leah replies absently. She turns her head and peers through the doorway, over her shoulder and at her brother who is now deeply asleep.

Jacob stares at her bared neck as she stretches round, stares at that tempting column of her throat which tests what little he has left of himself.

"Is he okay?" she asks, voice uncharacteristically soft.

Jake tears his eyes away, but meets her own when she turns back. "He will be. What about you?"

"Have to be." She shrugs and begins idly wrapping her ponytail around her wrist. "Thank you. For bringing him back. I wasn't sure . . ." She stares at the loop of her dark hair and runs her slim fingers over it. "You know."

"Sure. No problem." It vaguely registers that this is the part where he should leave. This is the danger zone, not so much the point of no return but pretty fucking close to it. Yet he can't pull himself away, can't help saying, "Hey, Leah, I—"

"Are you hungry?" she asks suddenly. "I'm hungry."

"I . . . Uh," he starts lamely, but she's already on her feet and waving at him to hurry up. "Okay, then."

He shuts Seth's door before he follows.

Out of this world kind of stupid indeed.


	6. five

**_Disclaimer:_** _In attempt to keep characters and backstories laughably canon (if you ignore the obvious), there are some unmarked direct line lifts from New Moon and Eclipse. Not mine, obviously._

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _If you find yourself needing a distraction from this suddenly crazy world and you'd like to request something like pre-reading chapters or having a nose at unpublished drafts, or you want to take prompts, need fic recs, or even if you just want a chat or a rant, anything, let me know! Stay safe. You're not alone._

* * *

 _now let me at the truth which will refresh my broken mind_ _  
_ _Mumford & Sons, "The Cave"_

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 **five.**

* * *

Knowing that Seth is upstairs, finally home, safe and sleeping, has put Leah's world into focus a bit. She pulls eggs and milk and orange juice from the fridge with new fervour, and silently begs that this new resolve of hers will last long enough to get her through the morning. She needs answers. There are things she still doesn't understand, other parts that she doesn't even know about — yet — and she'll be damned if she's not going to learn so she can help her little brother through this.

She hadn't pushed for answers with Sam. She'd asked a few times, of course — where he'd been, why he was gone all night, how could he be so exhausted all the time? — but he'd gotten so angry with her that she'd shut her mouth and let him be. It had been the wrong thing to do, all things considered, but she's not going to make the same mistake again. By the time Seth wakes up, she is going to be ready.

She steels herself before looking over her shoulder at Jacob. "Drink?"

He shrugs his indifference from the archway, his hulking frame seemingly taking up every inch of it. He might be as big as Sam, but his huge presence is . . . _different_ , somehow.

Maybe it's because, unlike Sam (though he _could_ have been . . .) Jacob is family. Maybe it's because she doesn't hate and love every inch of him at the same time. She's grown up with Jacob, after all, and whilst they might not have spent as much time with each other in the last few years he's always been around in one way or another. His sisters used to be her closest friends (so much so that she used to pretend they were _her_ sisters); their moms were best friends and their fathers were brothers in all but blood. They've spent Christmases and birthdays and spring breaks together, spent days and days running across the reservation. And when they were much younger, Sarah used to look after them all while everyone else went to work.

Or perhaps it's something else, yet she can't think what exactly. Not when his eyes are on her like that, burning holes into her. Even after she turns back to the fridge she can _feel_ him watching her every move, staring as her hands skirt around all the wrapped dishes of casserole and lasagne and stews in the fridge which seem to have appeared overnight.

"You and Billy can have some of this, because if you think I'm eating _that_ for a month . . ." She pulls a face he can't see and shuts the white door. It all makes a poor substitute for her dad's fish fry, but maybe when her mom returns to some semblance of living she'll try and perfect the recipe . . . Maybe. "I _hate_ casserole."

Jacob doesn't answer, doesn't move.

"Lasagne is okay, I guess," she babbles on, "but I'm gonna have to drain the stew to freeze it and it'll be a real pain in my ass. So . . ." She sets two glasses on the breakfast bar and shrugs at him. "You might as well just take it."

They hold each other's gaze. Hers searching, his burning. She doesn't know this Jacob. He looks like a stranger these days: awfully short hair, no shirt, bare feet, fierce features, dark circles under his weary eyes. Is the kid she used to shove into ditches and dare to eat worms still in there? She hopes. Will she feel the same about Seth? Is he the same person or—

No. She can't, won't think about it. Sam is gone, her dad is dead, and the Jacob she knows from years ago has all but disappeared. She will not be able to stomach losing Seth, too.

Leah nods towards a chair, trying to swerve off that dark road of thoughts. She will _not_ lose Seth. Ever. "You can sit down, you know. Before you fall down."

Jacob blinks. His face seems to clear a little bit and he squares his shoulders, looking almost like he's walking to his execution as he forces himself to move and takes a seat in one of the rickety kitchen chairs. She might have smiled if he didn't look as bone-tired as she feels or as miserable with the world as she is, sagging in the chair like that.

"You look like shit," she tells him.

His laugh is quiet, barely there. "Thanks," he mutters, and rubs his hand over his face as if to clear the shadows lingering there. "I'd ask for coffee, but it wouldn't have any effect."

Good, she thinks as she wordlessly pours a glass of juice and sets it in front of him, because she doesn't have any.

Jacob's hands immediately reach for it, his long fingers brushing each other against the cool glass as he studies it intently for a minute. Two.

He breaks the silence first.

"You have questions," he says. She thinks that he almost sounds resigned about the interrogation which is undoubtedly about to follow, as if he knew all along what she was really asking before she got to her feet on the landing.

"Only a few." It's a lie; she feels like she'll burst if she has to spend another day not understanding the whispers around the Rez. The secrets which Sam knows and won't tell her. "If you don't mind."

Jacob keeps his eyes on the glass and carefully asks, "What do you want to know?"

All of it. Every detail. The whole story.

"The truth," she says at once. "I want — I _need_ to know everything."

He looks unhappy about it, but nods.

"Do you swear? No bullshit, or no breakfast."

It takes longer than she likes, but eventually Jacob mimes crossing his heart and flicks three fingers up in a mock salute, as solemn as can be despite it. "Scout's honour," he promises, at which Leah rolls her eyes. She can't help the distrust she knows is plastered all over her face, even as a wan smile crosses his. "I swear."

It's as good as she's going to get, she supposes, but still she's dubious and it shows.

"Honest," he adds.

Fine. "Okay. How long have you been a . . ." She waves a hand as she turns her back, only slightly mollified. "You know."

"Werewolf?" Jacob snorts from behind. "You _can_ say it."

"Fine. Werewolf." She directs her scowl at the egg shells. "The legends always said 'shifter', but if that's what you prefer," she replies haughtily.

"Think I prefer their version, actually," he mutters. "Hollywood didn't get any of it right. _Nobody_ did. It sucks." The sigh which leaves him is long, a drawn-out and frustrated sound for emphasis before he changes the subject. "What are you making?"

"Uh." Leah stares downward at the mess she's already made. She's cracked five eggs without reason. "Omelette, I guess. A really big omelette. Or I can do pancakes instead if you'd like."

"Whatever you want."

"Pancakes," she says without thinking. She cranes her head round. "What do you want?"

The question seems to stun him something stupid, and it doesn't sit well with her. All he does is stare at her again, clearly struggling to find his words.

"Or does Sam make those decisions for you too?"

Jacob doesn't answer so she waits, her eyebrows raised in a silent question until he finally relents with a huff and looks back down at his hands. "Pancakes are fine."

Leah doesn't believe him — since when did it become so hard for him to choose for himself? — but opens a cupboard and reaches for the flour anyway. "So. Why does it suck? You seem to be pretty good at it. Seth likes you."

Of course, Seth likes everybody. But she'd heard them on the landing. The sound of Seth's heartache had almost had her throwing her door open. She's still unsure why she stopped herself. And then in his bedroom . . .

"I didn't want to upset him. It gets ugly if we get too angry and lose our temper."

Leah chances another look over her shoulder. "Does that happen a lot?"

Jacob scowls, unhappy again. "Too much. I've only been at this for what, like a month now? Billy keeps threatening that the next pair of shorts I lose will be my last and that I'll have to go around butt naked."

Leah thinks about the shreds of fabric from Seth's clothes which she'd picked up after getting home from the hospital. "Please don't."

"I can't help it. It's a little better now, I suppose," Jake allows, albeit begrudgingly, "but it's still hard. It probably always will be."

Leah frowns at that. Before he'd . . . _exploded_ , Seth had been more snappy than usual. Just like Sam, she thinks. It's easier to see now, to realise how similar things had been with her boyfriend and then her brother, but she's never thought to compare the two of them before. To think that Seth is going to be worse, and she's going to have to be as careful with him as she was with Sam . . . It's going to drive her insane.

"The first time it happened to me . . ." Jacob's voice dips. "We haven't exactly been kept in the dark, you know? I mean — you know the legends as well as I do. We've grown up with them. And Billy had been dropping hints for such a long time . . . Honestly, I thought I was going to have him committed."

"How did he know?"

"Same way we should have noticed Seth was close. But he's too young — _nobody_ expected him to phase, and we weren't watching. We've been waiting for . . . Anyway, I guess everyone just assumed Seth was hormonal or whatever, having a growth spurt and being a teenager."

 _"We're_ teenagers," she reminds him, even though she _had_ thought that.

Jacob laughs, bitter and cold over the sound of the whisk. "Right."

"We are. I mean, sure, you don't look like one. You're all . . ." She gestures limply with her free hand. "You know. It's not like someone's going to card you or anything."

"Right," he says again, but at least there's less bite to his tone this time. There's even the dimmest light of humour in his eyes. "I'm not driving out to Forks and getting you a bottle of vodka, if that's what you're asking."

"Nope." She tries not to sound too smug. "I don't get carded. Tried it a few weeks ago."

Not without effort — she'd had to dress up for the occasion, show some skin, bat her thickly covered eyelashes an obscene amount of times. But it had worked. The bottle of tequila and pack of smokes are still underneath her bed, stashed with the too-short skirt she has only ever worn to prove a point.

"Huh." Jacob has that weird look again, the one that's a little close for comfort, one that she's not used to coming from someone other than Sam. But Leah stares right back, a challenge and a question in her eyes as his rove over her body, down her neck and along her hips. It's half a minute before Jacob meets her gaze and, seemingly remembering himself, quickly averts his eyes.

"Anyway," he says after another moment, his voice rough and unapologetic. "Age isn't the issue. Won't be for a long time, I guess, not until I figure out how to quit."

It's Leah's turn to give him _her_ look, then, the one that she's quickly perfected in recent days and says, _Explain_ , even though it's never worked.

But it has more of an effect on Jacob than it's had on Sam, and he tells her about not ageing. About looking twenty-five-or-something for the rest of his life unless he can gain enough control to stop phasing. And he really, really wants to be able to stop, because longevity is nine kinds of wrong and doesn't wanting it make him no better than the bloodsuckers?

Fork deep in batter, Leah purses her lips. "It sounds kind of nice, I suppose," she says eventually as evenly, as carefully as she can, even though she can think of nothing worse. "Not having to face your own mortality."

"If you can get over outliving your family, friends," he counters in a similar tone. Careful. Leah doesn't have to guess why. It feels like everyone is being overly wary about acknowledging death since her dad's heart gave out.

She refocuses on breakfast and says, "You'd have long enough to see the world. _Really_ see it and—"

"Nobody to see it with."

"—you'd be able to go back when it changes, to see it all over again . . ."

"Sounds really boring." Jacob sighs. "I like — I _liked_ my life, Leah. All of it. Even the crap stuff like school. I never thought I'd say it but I _miss_ going to school. I wanted to go to college so I could open up a garage and sell cars, or just forget college and do it anyway. I know that I could have. I would have been really good at it."

"And you can't now because . . . ?"

"Because — I just can't now. I'm in this for life."

"Well, that's just the kind of bullshit I was talking about." She refuses to believe that this is Seth's life now, too. There is _no way_ that he is not graduating, absolutely _no way_ that she will let him drop out. "If you can work out how to stop, then why can't you do everything else?"

"Just because I _want_ to stop doesn't mean that I _can_. And even if I quit . . . What's the point?" His laugh is mirthless, twisted and wrong. "There's always going to be bloodsuckers. I mean, the Cullens have come back twice now . . ."

As the pancakes brown, Leah learns about the Cullens and Charlie's daughter who Leah thinks has always thought was boring and mopey and a bit wet, really, but then she finds out the girl actually wants to be like them. Bella _wants_ to be a vampire, is probably becoming one of them right now for all they know, Jacob says.

"That breaks the treaty though," Leah replies, remembering that particular story, "right?" And Jacob only nods, because there's not a damn thing he can do about it even though it's obvious he really wants to. Just about everyone knows he's got a major crush on Charlie's daughter. "So what happens then?"

"Sam says we'll have to fight. I don't really think they'd come back if they bite . . ." Jacob swallows thickly. "If they make her one of them and come back, we'll have to kill them."

Leah almost drops the plate she's about to slide in front of him, arms feeling slightly leaden. "And when — when you say _we_ . . ."

"All of us," Jacob says, and he looks sorry about it too. For good reason. "The whole pack."

She's never going to let Seth out of the house ever again, she thinks as she sets Jacob's plate down before him. "That's not happening," she announces resolutely. No way.

"Leah—"

"No. Sam's just going to have to rethink that plan." Her voice is dripping with her own type of venom. "Only over my dead body is Seth going to be part of that. Sam or no, treaty or no, there's not a fucking chance in hell that I'm going to—"

"It doesn't really work like that. If fighting is what Sam decides he wants to do, then we all have—"

"Why _Sam?_ " she demands, throwing her hands up. "Why does it have to be what _Sam wants_ or _Sam says_?"

"He's in charge."

" _Why?_ "

"Sam's Alpha, Leah. What he says goes." Jake stabs at his food, jaw clenching. "If he gives the order, then you can't refuse."

"Alpha?" She's nearly spitting, storming back and forth in front of the breakfast bar. "What kind of idiot thought that was a good idea? No — don't tell me, I don't care. He's not in charge — not of me. And he can't stop _me_ keeping Seth out of this bullshit. This is _insane,_ Jacob, he's just a kid and I'm not—"

"You can't do anything. Sam . . . He phased first. He . . ." Jacob pulls another face at his pancakes, grip tight around his fork. "I really think he should be the one to tell you all this, Leah."

She points her finger at him. "Don't do that. Don't decide what I should and shouldn't be told—"

"I'm not, I'm really not. I'm not trying to get out of it, I just — I told you yesterday. I really think you should hear it from him. It won't be easy to hear, and I don't want to hurt you."

"Have you been living under a rock?" she asks in disbelief. "What makes you think it'll be easier hearing it from him?"

"He didn't mean to hurt you, believe me . . . but he did, I know, I know," he says automatically underneath her glare. "I've seen it all. It's like I was there."

"How could you have been? That all happened months ago. And you said so yourself that it's only been about a month for you."

Jacob gives up with his pancakes and pushes the plate away, taking a deep breath. "We . . . hear each other. When we're phased. We can talk to each other, coordinate. It's helpful, but everything is laid out for everyone else to see. More than thoughts. We can . . . _feel_ each other, see each other's memories."

"That's . . . That's the most disgusting I've ever heard." But it draws her up short, and she finds herself perching on the edge of the seat opposite him. " _Everything_?"

Jake nods, his lips set in a thin, grim line.

"Private things? Things like . . ."

He pushes his barely-touched plate towards her. "You eat, I'll talk."

Only when she grudgingly picks up his fork and starts picking at the food does he start.

"I'm just learning, but Sam . . . When Sam changed — the first time — he had no help with any of this. Not like me, not like Seth. It's _horrible_ , Leah. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But we weren't alone — for me, Jared and Embry and Sam and Paul were already there, helping me, talking to me. In my head. And then when Seth phased a few days ago, I was there too. But Sam had no help. He had it so much harder than the rest of us. He was the first, and he was alone, and he didn't have anyone to tell him what was happening. He thought he'd gone insane. It took him two weeks to calm down enough to change back."

Two weeks and three days. She remembers.

"Well, you know what happened after that," Jake continues. She nods. "Old Quil found him soon after, and then with your dad and Billy, they explained everything. Your dad — Harry, Billy and Mr. Ateara had all seen their grandfathers make the change. They were the only ones who remembered.

"And it was easier when he understood — when he wasn't alone anymore," Jake carries on. "They knew he wouldn't be the only one affected by the Cullens' return, but no one else was old enough. So Sam waited for the rest of us to join him. But he couldn't tell you." Jacob looks helplessly at her as she tilts dangerously on the edge of her seat still. "We're not supposed to tell anyone who doesn't have to know that it's all true — the legends. And it wasn't really safe for him to be around you, but he managed. You managed."

"And then we didn't. And then he left me," she tries to say as matter-of-fact as she can, though she's pretty certain she's about to find out why. She stops eating.

"He didn't have a choice about that. He—"

And . . . there it is. Pain. Everything starts hurting, right on cue, and it erupts from every inch of her.

"He didn't have a _choice?!"_

Jacob flinches and has to take a few deep breaths. "Wait — let me explain. In some of the stories . . . Did you ever—" he swallows harshly "—did you ever hear about imprinting?"

Oh, she feels sick. So, so sick. But Jacob doesn't wait for an answer, and his words which follow come out in a rush, pleading and apologetic — not because he's sorry that it happened, but sorry that he's the one who has to say it.

"That's what happened to him. That day, in your backyard . . . Sam imprinted. And when he . . . when he saw Emily, nothing mattered anymore. Because sometimes . . . we don't know why exactly . . . we find our mates that way. That's why he left. He freaked."

"Oh, please," Leah manages to bark around the sudden sickness, leaping out of her seat. "I've heard just about everything now."

"It's true. It happened to Jared, too, and . . . Well, trust me. I've felt—" Jacob all but chokes. "I've seen it. You just know."

"Nope, I changed my mind. That, right there — _that_ is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. _Mates_?" She'd scoff if she didn't think it would make her hurl pancakes back up. "So much for no bullshit, Jacob Black. What do you mean? Like animals? For _breeding_?"

He looks uncomfortable, painfully so, but she's so furious she's sure there's red creeping in at the edges of her vision. There's no room for anything else. Not Jacob's guilt, his unease. Only her rage.

"Well?" she demands, voice rising. "What is it? How can you just _know_? I don't _understand!_ "

Jacob shrugs. "Nobody understands. Nobody from Ephraim's generation imprinted — there's nothing in the journals, nothing except from the pack before his and they're . . . cryptic at best. When they're translated, they could be interpreted in loads of different ways."

"So Sam could have gotten it wrong."

"No." Jacob shakes his head. "Not wrong. He might have gotten the _whys_ wrong, maybe. Everyone thinks differently. But he didn't get the imprint wrong. Nobody gets a choice about that part."

"No shit! You're telling me that I lost Sam to some — some mystical higher power? That he had no choice? Of course he had a choice, Jacob! Everyone gets a choice!"

His face darkens. "Not everyone. The one who gets imprinted on, maybe. The wolf will be anything, do anything she wants. It's not exactly tested, but . . . who can resist that level of commitment? Nobody's been told to just be a friend before."

Even worse. Emily could have refused. The bitch could have told Sam to get gone as soon as she'd understood what was going on. That way Emily would still be family — her friend, her sister. If only she'd told Sam to be her friend . . . or nothing at all.

Leah is never going to forgive them. If there had been any doubt about that before, any idea that someday maybe she would have been able to push past this . . . _hatred_ . . . No. Never.

Her limit reached, angry, vicious tears prick at Leah's eyes, her stomach rolling, and she barely makes it to the kitchen sink in time to empty her stomach. She heaves until there is nothing left, and several times after that, over and over and over again.

Jacob is there. He's _everywhere_. He stays even when she feebly tries to push him away, one hand scooping her loose hair up and the other rubbing her back. She vaguely thinks his hands are trembling, but maybe it's her — throat raw, cheeks wet, she's shaking so bad that she's not sure she'll ever be able to stop.

"I'm sorry," he whispers several times, the words barely legible. "Jeez, it actually _hurts_ to hurt you."

"Get out," she gasps when she finds her wits, though still she's hunched over the sink. Her fingers hurt from grabbing the edges of the counter so hard, the tips of them white and stretched to breaking point. "Go — get out, get out, get out!"

"Sorry," Jacob says again, his voice still strained, but in spite of it he sounds like he genuinely means it. "No can do. Not like this. I think you're the one person who can't order me away. Especially not now."

Leah swears colourfully at him as he spews his nonsense. She throws out every nasty word she can think of now she's found her voice, every ounce of fury she can throw at him, but it's not enough because Jacob doesn't leave and he doesn't fight with her. But he does take advantage when her voice eventually dies and her hands slip from the counter. He eases her away, mumbling something about cleaning up, whispering the apologies she's still not taking in as he leads her out of the kitchen.

It's only when he's about to steer her into the living room does she really put up a fight, and maybe he sees the shredded carpet she's not gotten rid of yet or maybe she digs her nails in too deep when her knees finally give out, but he at least seems to understand.

Not there. She's not been in there since the night after—

"Okay, not there. Calm down, it's alright. I'm sorry."

Instead of forcing her in, he scoops her up in one swift movement and takes her upstairs.

Her struggles are feeble. Jacob probably barely notices; he carries her like she's nothing against his solid weight, and she knows this situation should infuriate her something stupid but she can barely see straight. This is like nothing else. Nobody and nothing is the same. How can it be? Sam was _taken._ By _Emily._ And Sam _let her._ And — and —

In her room there's nothing left except tears. No sickness, no anger, just grief. Different from what she'd felt with Harry, what she _feels_ about Harry, and yet familiar nonetheless.

Jacob strokes her back throughout, his broad hands rubbing up and down her spine, along her hair. He pushes the wet strands away from her cheeks and behind her ears, speaking so low to her in Quileute all the while. She still doesn't catch any of the words. She doesn't even try to; she's heard nothing at all yet it feels like it's enough. But somehow he soothes her all the same as he waits for her to get her breath back, for it to even out and her face to dry.

It doesn't. Not for a long time.


	7. six

_gonna be who i am / be who i am / and give it up_ _  
_ _Kings of Leon, "Wait for Me"_

* * *

 **six.**

* * *

"Okay." Jacob sits back on his haunches. "Now clamp it here—" he points at the last crack at the bottom of the door frame which Seth has just sealed with wood filler "—and at the other end, then in the middle."

His face set with concentration, Seth pushes the jaws of the clamp together and starts twisting.

"Wait — gently, okay? You'll break it."

"It's already broken," Seth says, frowning with the barest hint of frustration.

Jacob rolls his eyes, though it's mostly at the look Seth is giving him from underneath that untamed hair of his which has still not been cut. It looks like a damn haystack. "The clamp, dummy. You're a lot stronger now."

"Oh." Something loosens in the kid's face as his grip relents on the handle. He looks suddenly wary of himself, and he's hesitant as he starts tightening the clamp again. "How'dya learn to do this, anyway?"

"Broke the door on the garage once and split the frame just like this," Jacob explains. "Well, actually — your dad did."

Beside him, Seth presses his lips together as tightly as he's winding the clamp, barely breathing and evidently trying not to react — and failing miserably.

"Billy showed me what to do," Jake carries on, as if he's not noticed, "but he said I was the one who had a hissy fit and locked myself in; I was the one who forced him to get Harry over to break it down in the first place . . ." He passes Seth another clamp. "Here, do the top next. Anyway," he says with a huff as they both stand, "it was my fault, so he said I was the one who had to fix it."

Seth has secured the clamp and reached for another by the time he finds his voice. "I didn't know he did that."

"I think he enjoyed it. I remember he looked real pleased with himself when it all came down. Billy laughed himself stupid, but maybe that was at me 'cos I probably looked like a thirteen-year-old who'd just shit his pants," Jacob recalls, voice light.

It doesn't make Seth smile like he'd hoped. The boy won't, or can't, take his eyes off of what he's doing as he asks, "Won't he be wondering where you are?"

"Probably not." Jacob's smile drops. "Sorry, kid, I didn't think. Do you want me to go?"

"No," Seth says all too quickly. "I don't. I just thought — doesn't he worry about you?"

"Naw." Billy might have been a bit . . . _cantankerous,_ especially when it came to being persuaded to go to a doctor about his feet (the old bastard would never be convinced, even though he knew that the head bloodsucker didn't work at the main hospital anymore), but he was nothing short of proud that his son had phased. "Charlie will be keeping him pretty busy today, I reckon."

Remembering yesterday, how he had torn away in the cruiser, Jacob wonders what Charlie thought of the bullshit note Bella had left him when he'd finally gotten home.

 _Please, please, **please** take care of Charlie, _she had begged. Maybe he _should_ go home, he thought. If Charlie _was_ there . . .

No — this is more important.

It's become a little startling when he remembers that Bella has not been crossing his mind as much — and only then with a little prompting. He's hardly been thinking of her at all, when less than two days ago he was thinking of nothing _but_ Bella. All. The. Time. When he was patrolling, when he was in the garage, when he was lying awake in bed and staring at the ceiling and—

Well. The pack radio is going to be noticeably different now, that's for sure. Even to himself. But he doesn't think that his brothers are going to miss The Bella Show too much. Or maybe they will — especially when they learn that another one of them has imprinted.

"Oh." Seth looks uncomfortable. "Right. Sorry."

It's too late for Jacob to school his features into something neutral when he realises that Seth has misinterpreted his expression for something other than it is.

"S'fine," he says. "I'll catch him in a bit, see if Charlie's calmed down any."

"Can you tell Leah about Dad, before you go later?" Seth's lips twist in some semblance of a smile as he works. Talking about Leah is easier, something that Jake has noticed about Leah when she talks about Seth, too. "I think she will really like that story."

"Yeah, sure." Jake huffs, doing his best to sound amused as he ignores the way his heart just skipped. He's going to have to get used to that, her name being said. But it's automatic, involuntary, just like being unable to not tilt his head a fraction upwards and listen for the sound of her breathing.

It's gentle, deep and even, much like Sue's across the hall. Still sleeping. She's been out for a while.

Jacob had sat with her for at least two hours before deciding that he had to move, that he had to get out of her room. Already she is tightly woven into everything he is and what makes him who he is, all he will be — this brand new person. And whatever she feels in return, his wolf will always return in kind; it is supposed to do and be what she wants, after all, and, apparently, they're all going to be deliriously happy about it.

The wolf wants it anyway, mirage or not. Demands it. It roars that Jacob _has_ to have it all otherwise he'll die.

Well — not really, but something pretty close to it.

Fucking imprinting.

It hadn't been easy, leaving her room. He hadn't been able to smell anything that didn't belong to her. She's all warm amber, summer wind and something wild, and her gods-damned scent has been driving him absolutely crazy since she brushed past him and Sam in the kitchen yesterday. He can still smell it now. But being there with her sleeping in his lap and resting her head against his chest, completely at ease . . . He'd known then that he had to move before he put himself in danger of doing something really, really stupid.

So he had set her down on her bed and had pulled the covers over her, already missing her warmth — _nothing_ was warm to him anymore; his temperature is pushing a whopping whole hundred-and-nine degrees, and apart from his brothers (and now Leah, it seems) the world has turned into this cold place. He has to tell himself every time he lifts his dad that the old man still has a pulse. And he'd just _had_ to tell himself to leave Leah be, otherwise he would have stayed and she would have woken up and he would have told her everything. About the warmth, about everything. She would have been declaring her disgust towards him by now.

He knows keeping something like this from her will do neither of them any good. In time, he's going to do or say something which she won't understand and he won't be able to explain unless she knows, but how can he possibly tell her this final part? How can he tell her that the thing which took Sam away from her has now irrevocably taken her away from him, too? Because she might never forgive Sam, or Emily, but it's obvious to anyone with a brain that she still loves him; her reaction to what he'd already told her had proven as much, and Jacob is pretty dead certain that if he takes any of that away she'll never forgive him either.

Tell her. Don't tell her. Tell her. Don't. He is in deep, deep shit either way.

"Will we see the others today?" Seth asks after a while of working in silence. His eyes quickly scan the quiet street — not for the first time since they've started on the other side of the door frame. They are slowly working their way along with what tools Jacob had managed to pull together from Harry's shed (before Seth had woken up and found him giving himself splinters).

"You know," Seth adds, self-conscious now. "Sam, Embry . . ."

Jacob's eyes follow. He can't laugh at Seth's nervousness. When he's not been acting like he can see through the ceiling and into Leah's room, he has been doing the same — looking down the driveway and along the street. As if he's expecting to be caught in the act, to be seen somewhere he shouldn't be.

"I guess." It's well past lunchtime — someone is undoubtedly going to come looking for them at some point. "We can always go to them, if you'd prefer. They're mostly always at Emily's."

Seth's eyes bulge. "Emily's? No. I can't. She'll . . . She's going to hate me," he whispers, horrified.

"Of course she won't! Sometimes she hits us with her spoon or her towel, sure, but that's—"

"Leah. I meant Leah."

"Oh. Well — yeah, probably," Jacob concedes. "For like half a second, though, kid. S'not your fault, you know. She knows that. She'll understand."

Seth over-tightens the clamp, breaking it, hands shaking and his breathing suddenly coming in frightful fits and starts.

"Seth—"

"Don't. Please." His voice breaks on the last word as if he's about to choke. "I gotta — I have to—"

Seth takes off like a bullet, barely hidden underneath the cover of the trees across the way before splitting his skin. And whilst Jacob knows there are some things that he can't fix — things like Seth thinking everyone hates him and blames him for Harry's death — he so badly wants to go after his brother, but he's a coward and can't make his feet move.

 _Coward._

 _Coward_ , the world chants as Jacob finishes the work alone. _Coward,_ it taunts as he rolls up the rug in the living room. He rolls it so tightly that there are no holes, no frayed threads to be seen or to betray what happened upon it, and sets it outside. Out of sight, out of mind. Then he sands the door frame down, screws the hinges back in, tests the lock, that one word echoing off the wood and back at him all the while.

 _Coward, coward, coward._

* * *

There's nowhere else to go, so he goes to his garage where everything once made sense.

Parked exactly where he knew it would be, Jacob looks at Charlie's cruiser with something like cold shame before he slips through the side door.

Charlie is kind of predictable when there's trouble with Bella and he doesn't know what to do: he seeks Billy out — because Billy has two daughters, which means that he's supposed to know what to do during times of crisis. Charlie hasn't yet seemed to have figured out that Billy is absolutely clueless when it comes to these things. Rach and Becca are proof of that.

Jake doesn't blame his dad. He hadn't known what to do for his sisters, either, and leaving the Rez for the big wide world was something they'd always planned to do even before their mom had died. But maybe they would have stayed a little longer if Billy hadn't been at such an obvious loss. Maybe they would visit more than they did, which was, suffice to say, _never_.

Becca always blames the price of plane tickets; Rach always has some big test, or some project she just can't get out of — not even on Thanksgiving, which they don't celebrate on principle alone but still get together for so they can watch the football and gorge on food all the same. The past few Christmases have gone by without them, too, just like his birthday, Billy's birthday, Easter, _their_ birthdays, the Fourth of July . . . This year's holidays will be no different.

By the time Charlie figures this all out, Bella will probably have a dead heart and crimson eyes and will already be on her way to forgetting them all. It's why Jacob won't go in the house. She might already be dead (because that's what bloodsucker means: dead — no, _worse_ than dead) and this could be the last time that Charlie comes over to beat the world and his daughter's decisions to rights with Billy.

It usually takes a while for his dad to calm Charlie down. This time last year Charlie had come over for the same reason — Bella taking off without warning — and Jake had slept here in the garage, in the hammock, just to escape the yelling.

Only now, with his new keen ears and heightened senses, Jacob can hear every word from inside the house. He whacks his beaten stereo to life in an attempt to drown it all out and starts picking up the nuts and bolts he'd tipped out of his toolbox two days ago.

It takes _ages_ , just as he'd predicted. He wears through the same album in the stereo thrice over, volume rocketing as he practically rearranges his whole damn garage so he can get every single piece of metal he'd so carelessly set free. He doesn't care. It's keeping him busy, keeping him away from doing Really Stupid Things and away from Facing The Consequences.

When he's gotten everything back in his toolbox (and has rearranged that, too — twice), he even kills the music and tries sleeping in the hammock, which he hasn't done in forever, but twenty minutes of restlessness has him pretty damn sure he's never going to sleep right ever again. The imprint has gotten him all bent out of shape. It's not right. _He's_ not right; he's _exhausted_ — he's not slept for days — so it only makes him that more frustrated when he can't shut off. If he were still a normal teenager he would have definitely passed out by now.

He has to tell her. He can't live like this forever. He can try and distract himself all he wants — hell, he could rip out the head gasket of the Rabbit and keep himself busy for a whole day — but sooner or later he's going to have to patrol. He's probably only gotten away with not taking a shift for so long because they all think he's still looking after Seth, but they're all going to find out. And someone (three guesses who _that_ will be) is going to spill the beans. Better he do it first.

And he's about to get up and face his fate — honest, he is, he swears he's going to — when Seth barrels through his door red-faced and stark naked. There's twigs in his hair.

"I didn't know where else to go," he says, as if he's surprised to find himself here. "I went back home and you weren't . . . I couldn't—" He swallows thickly. "I'm sorry."

Jacob gets to his feet and throws Seth a pair of shorts from the small stack he keeps for emergencies only. They're all mostly worn, faded cut-offs which have seen better days and are way too tight, but it's better than going into the house in his birthday suit in front of unsuspecting visitors. "It's fine." He did offer his hammock up, after all. "Don't worry. You hungry?"

" _Starving,_ " Seth breathes.

Jacob smiles wryly. "You'll get used to it." He strains an ear to the house, but hears nothing. "Is Charlie's cruiser still out front?"

"Nobody's in. I knocked. Well, sorta," Seth admits sheepishly, which Jacob takes to mean that the kid just let himself in, "but then I heard you in here."

"S'fine," he says, shoving at the kid's shoulder and herding him out of the garage while resolving to give the kid the haircut of his life as he eats. "They're probably at yours."

"I saw the door. Thanks."

"Sure, sure. You didn't go in?"

Seth focuses on his feet as they walk up to the house. "My mom was crying. I wasn't even on the drive and I could hear her and I . . . Leah — she was trying to . . . I can hear _everything,_ Jake."

"It turns into background noise soon enough. Trust me."

Seth's sigh sounds like something it shouldn't for another few decades: weary, all-too knowing, a bit deprecating. They all have the same sigh now. "It's annoying."

"If you think that's bad, wait 'til you start patrolling with Jared. Dude sings hair-metal after a night with Kim because she doesn't want him thinking about — well, you know."

"Does it work?"

"Nope."

Seth sighs _that_ sigh again. "Great."

* * *

Emily is _ecstatic_ when Jacob arrives with Seth two hours later. She waves them in excitedly, her smile stretching all the way up the left side of her face where it meets the corner of her shining eye. Tears, Jacob realises, but wisely keeps his mouth shut as he pushes Seth and his new haircut into her home.

"Hi, Emily," Seth says quietly.

"I'm so glad you're here. Well, not that — you know, but you're here, I'm so pleased," she babbles. "I didn't think you'd come but I baked some muffins just in case because Sam said that you might but he didn't know when and I wasn't sure if it would be today or tomorrow or—"

"Jeez, let the kid breathe, Em," Jacob says, forcing a laugh. He can feel Seth's tense shoulders underneath his palms as he steers him forward. And whilst _he_ is suddenly feeling like a traitor of the first order, he knows it is nothing compared to what Seth is feeling. His nerves are rolling off him in waves.

Her half-smile twists into bashful embarrassment. "Sorry. Sorry, Seth. Would you like a muffin?"

Seth looks back at Jacob, to Emily, then at Jacob again, completely out of his depth.

"They're blueberry," Emily says, as if it helps, and Jacob tilts his head with the permission that Seth is asking for.

"Uh. Sure," he eventually replies.

Emily grins and rushes into the kitchen.

"She's . . . different," Seth whispers, watching her go.

Jacob chuckles and drops his hands. "She's just happy to see you, kid," he tells him just as quietly.

"I haven't seen her in months. Not even after — I didn't realise how bad—" he starts to say, but quickly shuts up as he hears Emily begin to hurry back and reappears with a whole tray of blueberry muffins, smiling wide.

Dutifully, Seth takes one, and then another, with her encouragement.

"Jake?" Emily offers the tray up to him, all but bouncing on her feet and unable to keep still.

He suspects the muffin will probably taste like betrayal might, but takes one anyway. Emily grins.

"The others have been in and out all day," she tells them. Seth is looking around. "Sam and Jared left about an hour ago."

"Any word on Quil?" Jacob can't help but ask.

"Not yet. Sam thinks it will be really soon," she says. "Come and sit down, Seth."

As with everything, Seth looks to Jacob before he does anything. And Jacob really, really hopes that it's not going to last, because as familiar as it is from his days before pack-life, when Seth hero-worshipped him a bit even then, it's going to get old pretty quick. Still, Jacob nods, permission given, and wills the kid on.

He's not sure whether it was a good idea to bring Seth over with nobody else here. But it had to happen — Seth is going to be spending a lot of time here, as they all do. Even Kim (who is no better than a frightened mouse and barely speaks a word to anyone but Jared and Emily) appears every so often to make camp at the kitchen table and catch her boyfriend up with his homework. She calls it their _den_ , because her wolf has been here since the beginning when it was just him and Sam holding the lines together, while Paul eats most of his meals here and Embry has all but claimed the couch in the corner for himself — if only because it's a place he can sleep without his mom shouting at him.

Point is, they're all here so often that it feels strange to not have Paul and Jared fighting over the last piece of chicken or Embry flat on his back and snoring, but then, Jacob has usually been wherever the pack is over the last month — and Bella during all the weeks before that. He has become used to it.

And Emily _loves_ it. She positively beams when Seth takes a chair and reaches for a third muffin five minutes later. Jacob's not even eaten his first.

By the fifth muffin, Seth is starting to look like he belongs. By the sixth, he's talking to his cousin without prompting, apparently glad of someone else familiar who he can talk freely with. And by the seventh, it eventually seems he has relaxed enough that Jake sinks onto Embry's couch.

"You know, if you're that hungry," Emily says, "I can make you something else. Something hot."

"I don't know why," Jacob grumbles, leaning back. "He ate me out of house and home only a few hours ago."

He slings his arm over his face, trying to settle — but his wolf has its back up, prickling in protest. He locks it down and stamps on its tail for good measure; he is so goddamned tired. _Please_ , he begs it, _let me sleep_.

 _Traitor,_ it howls. _Judas._

He ignores it and focuses on Emily's laugh, Seth's half-hearted protest, before he mumbles something of his own which is incoherent to even himself and then — _finally, finally, thank you_ — succumbs into uneasy unconsciousness.


	8. seven

_smaller than dust on this map lies the greatest thing we have / the dirt in which our roots may grow and the right to call it home  
Sleeping At Last, "North"_

* * *

 **seven.**

* * *

Jacob feels as if he's barely closed his eyes when a hand shakes his arm. He groans, twisting his face into the worn back pillows of the couch which smell of wolf and boy and _pack_. It's reassuring, familiar, and more than likely the only reason he managed to fall asleep at all.

There's only one other place in the world he would have managed such a feat.

Sam pushes at his shoulder. "Wake up."

"No."

The long-suffering sigh that follows is one only ever used when he's around — not even Paul manages to give Sam as much trouble as he does — and Jacob thinks that if he opens his eyes he will see Sam pinching the bridge of his nose for added effect. He might even possibly be silently throwing up a prayer for help from Taha Aki himself.

Jacob ignores it and turns away again, burrowing into the mixed scents of his brothers. He doesn't care.

"It's almost sundown. Get up."

"No."

" _Jacob."_ Sam draws out his name with frustration. And Jacob, damn him, feels a chill run up his spine, his body unable to do anything else in response to the order which threatens in his Alpha's throat.

Fine. _Fine_ , he thinks, slowly uncurling himself. Every inch of him aches. The familiarity of the couch might have sent him quickly to sleep but it hadn't stopped him from being plagued with dreams he's never had before. He can feel just how fitful, how restless his sleep has been. Those dreams had been so real, so _vivid_ . . .

"Any time today, Jacob."

"C'mon, Jake!" Seth calls, his voice far too close for Jacob's liking. It yanks uncomfortably at the new thread which has latched around his heart and recognises Seth for who he is. Family. Brother. Something more. "Time to go!"

Jacob reluctantly cracks an eye open to the light. And sure enough, there is Sam holding his nose and there is Seth bouncing on his feet, both looking prepared to tip him onto Emily's carpet without apologies.

Jacob groans again, and though he knows the answer, can feel it wickedly taunting him, he asks, "Where are we going?"

Seth grins. "Patrol!"

Of course.

"Kill me," he tells them, tone entirely devoid of any kind of humour, but his bad luck seems to be on a running streak because they only roll their eyes at him, not able to take him seriously. "I mean it."

Seth just turns his grin to Sam. "Now?" he asks.

"Now," Sam agrees, and they pull him off the couch.

Assholes.

* * *

The redhead must have caught wind of Bella's tiny, psychic leech, Sam tells them, because she hasn't come anywhere near their lands since. He's keeping the pack on red alert, of course, but he seems so certain that she won't appear again until Bella does that he's given everyone the night off.

Everyone except for Jacob and Seth, that is.

"You're in charge," Sam says, "so we'll wake up and be right there if you call. Have fun."

The bastard has the nerve to smile at them before he shuts the door, but Seth only laughs before he turns to Jacob. Expectant, waiting, all too eager to get going.

He can't pull a face at the door when Seth's looking at him like that. So instead he takes a deep breath and trudges off the porch, setting off towards the forest which encompasses the house. Sam won't be smiling for much longer when he finds out — and neither will Seth, whose own smile seems to be splitting his face as he bounds after him.

He _bounds._ Damn kid is going to drive him to drink.

Well, he would if they _could_ get drunk. Paul took one for the team a few weeks back to find out how much it would take for their senses to be impaired, but he'd had to guzzle two crates of beer at an alarming rate before he felt so much as a buzz. And that had only lasted ten minutes before his body had burnt it straight off.

It had been a solid attempt. Even Jacob was willing to admit that, while Embry had been so impressed that he'd hurried right back to the store to buy three more crates so he could try the same thing himself, scraping quarters out of Emily's swear jar before he went.

He'd belched for hours and hours afterwards, but it had proved a point: they couldn't get drunk. Which was probably a good thing, considering, but Paul had been annoyed all the same.

He and Embry were both probably doing something just as stupid with the night off they'd been given. Jacob tries not to think too much about what he would have done with his.

Not this, that's for sure.

Seth's arms are swinging, his strides long when he catches up. Jacob suppresses a roll of his eyes.

"You seem . . . happier."

"I like Emily," is all Seth offers as an explanation. He kicks out his right foot, and Jacob sees the bit of leather cord hanging from the kid's ankle to be used for tying his clothes up before he phases. His smile is still a mile wide. "She made me this — just like the one you have."

"Yeah, we all have one. It saves a lot of time."

Time which Jacob does not have. It has run out, stretched as far as it can go, and has left him stranded. He'd tried to give himself a little more by stalking around Emily's kitchen and grabbing all the food he could find, chewing slowly as he made painful conversation with everyone until Sam had pushed them out of the door.

He couldn't pretend to be sick, because they didn't get sick. Nobody had caught so much as a damn cold since they'd phased, their immune systems too efficient now, their healing abilities from all things too rapid. And nothing like exhaustion or plain fear was a good enough reason to not patrol in Sam's eyes. They had to be dead or dying to be excused.

Dead or dying . . . or retired. He'd thought about quitting — he had been thinking about it continuously ever since he'd first seen Leah, had _really_ seen her, and had realised that she'll never accept him. He had almost handed in his resignation there and then, in that kitchen. But his temper is still too unpredictable to guarantee he'll never phase again, and he's not sure even that would be enough to stop the inevitable. It might put some sort of dampener on it, maybe, if he stops phasing, but he's pretty sure an imprint is a permanent thing. And control like that, control to stop, will take _years_. Sam doesn't even have a hope of retiring yet.

He could carry on trying to hide it from them, he supposes. It's a fool's shot, but maybe . . .

No. Definitely a fool's shot. Even if it were possible, what about Sam, who feels and hears and sees _everything?_ It's a miracle he still doesn't know. A miracle that, even if he has felt something, sensed something, he's not asked or pried too deeply about it.

Jacob can't hide that Leah is in his head. All. The. Time. Even now, right this minute, whether she knows it or not she is pulling at his subconscious, calling him, shredding and clawing at every bit of self-control he has fought for over these last weeks.

And Jared and Sam — when they patrol, their imprint is a steady beat in their head, an underlying pulse along the foundations of the pack. Imprints are _important —_ they are _sacred_ , not something to be ignored. Sam and Jared could never have hidden it if they wanted to. Hell, Jared had imprinted during second period and spilled his guts to Kim by the end of the school day.

But Kim, Emily . . . they had both already harboured secret crushes for their wolves. Kim had tacked Jared's name onto hers in her diary, for God's sake, and Emily had always looked at Sam from afar ever since the day he had been introduced to the family.

 _(That_ offering of information about Emily was something they'd only found out after Jared brought Kim home for the first time.)

They'd wondered, then, if there was always this predetermined pull. But while Jacob has always thought Leah a force of nature, he hasn't ever wanted her like this before. She is strictly, strictly off-limits; they've grown up together and his sisters would have teased him stupid if he'd ever shown something towards her, because she and Seth are practically family. It would have been weird.

He blows out a breath. He is absolutely done for.

"Kid. Before we do this—"

"I know. Make sure nobody can see, don't hurt anyone and save your clothes, yeah?" Seth says excitedly, already stepping out of his shorts. "I think we're good, though. Nobody's here except for us."

"Hang on a minute. I want to talk to you."

But what he wants to say flies right out his head when Seth smiles like that, and Jacob understands what he has to do.

There can be no mental disorganisation in the pack. Not if the redhead is coming back. Not if they are going to have to fight the Cullens. They have to be one solid, indestructible unit, with no pretences between them. They won't be able to function otherwise.

It's the only reason Jacob hadn't faked death in Emily's kitchen, because he knows this. Deep down, he knows that he will have to come clean because the pack has to be together on everything. Sam will stand for nothing less.

And it's that thought which makes him say, "Seth, you don't have to be okay with this—" he waves his hands about stupidly, a little bit manically "—or anything, you know. I mean, we couldn't even get you to phase back twenty-four hours ago. Twelve hours ago you were barely speaking. And now you're all excited and stuff, and it's . . . well, it's weird, kid."

"So what?"

He's never hated himself as much as he does right now. He's such a fucking hypocrite. "So I'm saying you don't have to be."

Seth frowns. "Why not? You're okay with it. Sam's okay with it. The others seemed fine—"

"I'm not. This is . . . It's _insane_ , Seth, that we have to do this, you know that, right? It might seem fun at first, but it's really anything but. It's real hard, kid."

"I — I know," he says, dropping his shorts. "I know that. But — Jake, what else is there?"

Jacob doesn't have an answer for that. "It shouldn't be this way," he says instead of replying. "You don't have to pretend that it's okay, because it's not. You're not going to be able to keep pretending when you phase. You can't. You're going to throw everyone off, so trust me when I say it's better to stop now. Stop pretending."

"I'm not—" Seth starts, but he can't finish. He gulps, and what composure he has been keeping together finally fractures. Because no — Seth is not okay with this. Seth is just trying to get on with it, because he doesn't want to — _can't_ think about anything else. And he's taking his lead from everybody else because he doesn't know what else to do. Because nobody's shown him a better way.

Seth's throat bobs again. And then he erupts.

"I don't know what else to do. I can't . . . You saw what I did, Jake! I killed him — _killed_ him, he's _dead_ — _I_ did that, it's my fault! And now everything's _so messed up_ and I can't _think_ anymore and I — I thought it was a bad dream and then it wasn't but there's nothing I can do about it so I have to pretend, Jake, I have to—"

He crumples to the ground, his breathing ragged. But it's not like the hot gasps before a phase takes hold. It's just pure . . . _brokenness_ , and Jacob cannot help but fall with him.

"Seth, you didn't kill Harry. Look at me." He grabs Seth's shoulders, his face which is streaked with tears. "Look at me. Hey. It's not your fault. You know your old man had a bad heart. Billy said he'd been taking pills since he was a kid, that he hadn't been taking care of himself like he should have been. Look at me, Seth."

Seth drags his eyes up, the whole action a struggling effort. And when his eyes — _Leah's_ eyes, Jacob thinks with a pang — meet his own, they are flat. Cold. Empty.

"You didn't kill your dad, Seth," Jacob tells him again, throat tight, "just like I didn't kill my mom after Billy let me help him change the oil two days before, okay? It just . . . happened."

He's never shared that before, not willingly. The reason why he'd holed himself up in the garage and had blamed himself for years and years, why he hadn't faced any of it until his sisters had gotten on that plane to Hawaii without looking back. Leaving him. But not, he'd finally learned, because he had been the reason their mom was dead. It was not his fault.

"My dad knows that. Your mom knows that. And so does your sister, okay?"

Seth's tears pool again, but recognition flares in his face against them. Faintly, but enough of it that Jacob feels a glimmer of hope that he'll be able to get the kid back on his feet.

"I'm sorry," he says after a long moment. God, he's such an asshole. "Just — it's really important. For everyone. I don't want you to fake it, okay? Don't even bother. It'll only make it worse, trust me. Trust _us._ We're pack."

Seth takes a breath as if he's about to say something, but after a thought swallows it back. He nods, and swipes lamely at his eyes, taking another lungful of air to steady himself as his hands drop in his lap.

He sits like that for a while, and Jacob is content to give him as much time as he needs. Sam's right — the redhead won't come back, not until Bella does. Patrol can wait, and not only because he's frightened to fall on four paws and let everyone see into his mind. He doesn't think Seth particularly wants him listening in right now, either.

Shit. He truly is a hypocrite. Nothing was worth breaking Seth in like that.

Fuck the greater good. Fuck the treaty. He'd thought the same when he had punched Sam, after Sam had pried some of his deepest secrets from him too. And Sam had beaten him right back, all the way into the ground until he was a sobbing mess.

He kind of wants Seth to hit him now. But he knows he won't, even if he asks.

So he waits.

Eventually, when darkness has finally set in, Seth stretches his legs out, his sigh just as long.

"Okay?"

"Yeah." Seth rubs at his face and sighs once more. "This really blows."

Jake bumps his shoulder, his smile small. "Attaboy." He stands, his hand offered out, and pulls Seth to his feet who dutifully ties his shorts to his ankle.

When Seth squares his shoulders again, new resolve clearing in his eyes, Jacob can see why Leah had so vehemently refused her little brother to be part of this. He could kill those bloodsuckers — no, he _will_ kill those bloodsuckers for the way this fourteen-year-old has to steel himself. That treaty is going to be torn to shreds when he's done.

"What now?" Seth asks.

"Well—" _I don't know, kid, I'm kinda making this up as I go along_ "—you can go home, if you want. I can take this one."

Seth frowns. "On your own? No. I mean, I gotta start somewhere, right? If this is what we have to do, then . . . let's do it."

"Right."

Silence falls enough as Jacob stares into the depths of the forest, towards something even he can't see, that Seth clears his throat. "Jake? You okay, man?"

"Sure," he says, but he doesn't stop looking, searching, and it's with a faint sort of horror that he realises what exactly it is — _who_ it is he's looking towards. Without even realising. Just like Sam, and just like Jared . . . There is that thread which is reeling him in and in without him even being aware of what's happening until it crashes down on him.

It takes everything he has to not put a step in that direction and go running towards where that thread ends.

Hell.

It's going to disrupt everything. It's going to throw Seth off any kind of training and guidance which Jacob has been appointed to give. Because these first days are the most important, after getting a new wolf back on his feet. It's make or break. If he himself hadn't been put in his place by Sam, he knows he would have been so disorganised that he wouldn't have known which way was up for weeks and weeks. And though he hadn't intended it, he has most certainly become that person for Seth now.

"Jake?"

"Yeah, kid." He shakes himself. "You ready?"

Seth stands to attention. It's almost funny.

"Okay." Jacob shucks off his own shorts, if only so he can give himself something to do. Anything other than having to look at Seth's face as he starts to wrap them up and says, "We've got a lot to go through."

"I can do it."

"I know you can, Seth," he assures him, gut twisting as he ties his shorts to his leather cord (he's going to _rip_ those leeches to pieces, burn them until they are ash in the wind), "just . . . keep an open mind, yeah? It's going to be easier because it's only going to be me and you, but that means there's a lot more to hear."

Seth shrugs. "You heard everything already."

"Yeah," he agrees easily, taking four steps back, "but you haven't."

"Like what?"

But Jacob has already summoned the fire in his belly, heat flooding through him within an instant. It's very, very easy — easier now that he's determined and knows what he has to do. The oncoming phase runs up along his spine, pushing out towards his arms, his legs, and within a second he is digging his claws into the earth.

So, so easy.

"Wow," Seth says.

Jacob snorts, shaking out his red fur as he stretches out, dipping low, feeling every joint respond and work together. He is glad for the relief it brings. Like he's been caged, and is now free to roam. But the silence is strange. He's not been alone like this for as long as he can remember, and it's almost like being in his own head again. Safe, private.

Daringly, he casts out a forbidden thought to make sure.

Silence.

It's fantastic.

Jacob sits back on his heels and cocks his head at Seth. _Come on, then._

It takes a while. Three scrunches of Seth's face which has lost all the puppy fat he had at Christmas and looks six, seven years old than it really is. Five grunts of struggling effort. But Jacob just waits, because this is another one of those things which Seth has to learn on his own. It's his body, his will alone which invokes the change now rippling over his body and has him standing as tall as a horse.

 _Phew._ Seth shivers. _Thought I'd never do it._

 _It gets easier,_ he replies, valiantly trying to keep his thoughts clear. Focused. He watches himself through Seth's mind, which never stops being seventeen kinds of freaky, looking a little larger and imposing than normal — but perhaps that's because Seth's the smallest of them, the youngest, a child looking at a grown-up despite the huge growth spurt he's had.

 _I'm not a child._ Seth bristles, his sandy-coloured tail flicking in response. _I'm fourteen._

Jacob squishes the memory of Leah standing in front of him at the stove, barefoot and defiant and beautiful with her lopsided ponytail as she had reminded him they're _all_ teenagers, really.

 _Sure, kid._ He huffs. _Let's get going._

If Seth has noticed anything, he doesn't comment. He's too wrapped up in himself, staring down at his surprisingly steady feet as they prowl through the woods, marvelling at how huge his paws are, what colour they are, how easily he can retract his dark claws, how sharp they are, how he can _feel_ with them.

 _Wow,_ Seth says again, surprise coating his tone now that he has finally taken the time to look at himself this way. Before it had just been running and hiding, trying to escape himself. This here is acceptance, of sorts, learning himself as he goes.

It's a good start.

Jacob begins making for the river, keeping his mind focused on Seth the whole way, and begins to show Seth the boundary lines which define their territory.

As they move, he can feel Seth's suspicion that he's being watched to make sure that he's acting okay, that he's not about to slip up and do something wrong. And Jacob, more than happy to pretend otherwise, doesn't let him think differently.

 _Here?_ Seth asks when they get close to the slippery riverbank.

 _You can smell it?_ Jacob asks, and Seth nods, thinking about the faint smell of sweetness he has caught and the way that it slightly burns his nose. _Good. It doesn't get so bad here, with the water and it being so damp, and what you can smell is all mostly the redhead anyway. With the Cullens gone, they haven't retraced their lines in months._

Seth eyes the invisible border with hesitancy. _What happens if you cross here?_

 _You can cross,_ Jacob tells him, _just don't do it on four legs._

 _But they can't cross into ours? Into La Push?_ His thoughts instantly fly to his mother and sister, a deep need to protect them seeping into his bones as he comprehends what he has been made for: to keep his tribe safe and defend them until his last breath.

 _Never. We kill them if they do_. _We **have** killed them — one of them, the one I told you about. They knew him, but he wasn't part of their . . . coven. The redhead knew him, too. I think they were together. _

Jacob thinks of Bella, and allows the memory of her revelation to play out across his and Seth's shared link. Laurent. Victoria. James. That scar on Bella's—

 _They **bit** her? _Seth is horrified; his ears flatten against his head as he recoils from the memory in his disgust.

( _"What's that?"_ he hears himself say. _"This is your funny scar, the cold one."_

 _"Yes, it's what you think it is,"_ Bella's echo whispers. _"James bit me.")_

Seth growls, unable to stop himself. His teeth, as sharp as his newfound claws, gleam against the moonlit water as the wildlife around them scatters in fright until there's nothing, nobody around but them, not even the fish in the river.

 _I know,_ is all Jacob can reply.

 _How can you stand it? That they got that close to her?_

Jacob remembers how he had barely kept himself in his skin as he turns his back and starts heading for the edge which separates La Push and Forks — the one which has more of a distinct smell of _them_ on one side and _home_ on the other: the official treaty line.

The boundaries aren't so invisible, if you know what to search for, if you press your nose close enough. Sight alone isn't enough, even if they all think their territory is more beautiful and can be defined by its vibrancy — if only because _they_ are in it, because it's _theirs_ no matter what the government or any bloodsuckers might say. Their lands are full of trees and mountains and rivers which flow into the ocean and beat against their cliffs; they are fifty miles of stretching and rolling, plush lands, and far, far too big for a pack of this size to cover so thoroughly on their own.

There will be more of them soon. Quil is _so_ close it's becoming unbearable. But that will only make seven. Still not enough, even if it will put them on a level-playing field with the Cullens when they all come back. Odds which will tip out of their favour again if Bella returns to Forks with crimson eyes and brings her new family's number to eight.

How many more? Two, three, four?

 _Maybe we won't see them again,_ Seth says with quiet hope. He doesn't want them anywhere near his family, and Jacob is inclined to feel the same.

 _They will._

He picks up their speed then; they've got a lot of ground to cover, a lot of markers for Seth to learn and become accustomed to, but he's not worried. The kid's confidence is sky-rocketing and as long as he focuses on _now_ , he'll do okay.

At the treaty line, he has Seth try and pick out the different scents of the bloodsuckers. What is Cullen, and what is the redhead, which is easier with one being more fresh than the other. He has Seth guess at the different sounds around them, and soon realises that whilst he might be the strongest and Jared might have the best eyesight, Seth definitely has the best ears of the pack.

Seth stands taller with the compliment, and starts working even harder. He recognises the next border after only a second, all without help from Jacob's thoughts which he purposefully kept as clear as possible for the test.

 _Good. Really good, Seth,_ he says, and Seth's pride washes over him as if it were his own. _Okay. Perimeters next. Embry's been digging out a new route a bit closer to home — see if you can find it._

And so they go on, and on and on and on without rest, not even a moment to pause, and towards the end of it Jacob is so drained — _mentally_ drained, from keeping his secrets in favour of giving Seth the guidance he desperately needs — that he finds a spot not too far from the Rez and thinks that even in the mud he could take a decent nap, _right there. . ._

It's difficult to keep his focus, but he's managing. Barely, but he is, by some blessed miracle. It will be worse when more phase in, providing more tangents of thoughts to pick up and bleed into his own, because he'll be damned the second he feels Sam and Jared's quiet, unrestrained pining for their imprints and he latches onto it with his own wishful thinking. When they want, he wants, and just like that the rest of the pack will want, too. They are one.

Who will be the first to feel exactly what _he_ wants when he looks into Seth's eyes and sees—

 _What's that?_ Seth asks, curiosity spiking as if he's heard his name but has been too engrossed in something else and missed part of the conversation.

Jacob shuts down. _Nothing. Just thinking about the hive mind thing._

 _I wondered about that earlier. Before — when Sam was trying to get me out of the cave. Why can he hide most of what he thinks? Like he's got his own private space, or something._

Because he's an ass, Jacob thinks, but he can't do anything about it because he has settled for being second-in-command. _Because he's Alpha. Think about it. If he was freaked or something, then the rest of us wouldn't have a chance in hell. It would be pure chaos. What we feel has an effect on everyone else. Him the most._

 _Huh. Makes sense, I guess._ Seth falls into trot beside him. _Can you do it? You're in charge, aren't you?_

 _I don't think so. I'm Second. And if neither of us are around, he can leave others in charge like Jared but the orders don't work right. Not so much weight to them._

 _So you're like . . . Beta?_

 _Yeah, that. Can't switch off the same, though,_ Jacob says, and he knows the jealousy he feels towards Sam about it slips through whatever barriers he has managed to erect. _Would be nice if the rest of us could have some privacy, too._

Seth readily agrees as Jacob silently chokes the life out of another stray thought, fixing his eyes on the thinning trees above. Dawn is not far away. They've been at it all night, and it's becoming harder to shield his lies.

 _Go home, kid. Get some rest. You did good tonight._

 _You sure?_

 _We're only a mile out from the Rez. Go. It's fine._

 _Okay._ He can feel how uncertain Seth feels about it, but eventually his exhaustion wins out and he nods his massive head. _Are you coming?_

His heart leaps, and he knows Seth has heard the skipping beat. _Huh?_

 _I thought . . . I dunno, I feel weird. I thought it was you and that you wanted to come, too. You can, if you want. They won't mind._

 _Maybe I'll swing by later_. _You go, Seth. Sleep. That's an order._

Thankfully, Seth doesn't need to be told twice, and Jacob collapses the second the kid is on two feet and out of sight. He listens, though, as Seth runs towards the place they both want to be most.

He is the worst person ever.


	9. eight

_a heart is not a stone / and is fragile when alone_ _  
_ _Ben Harper, "By My Side"_

* * *

 **eight.**

* * *

"You look stupid," Leah tells Seth plainly, running her fingers through the too-short strands of his thick, midnight hair. "You look like one of those troll dolls with the sticky up hair. You might as well have dyed it green."

Seth smiles sleepily into his pillow, his eyes closed. "I like it," he says quietly, entirely content. (He always turns into a sack of shit when someone touches his hair — that's why she's doing it, if only to prove to herself that she's not completely lost him.) "Jake cut it for me."

Leah purses her lips together and keeps her hand steady as it brushes along his forehead. Since Seth walked in half an hour ago it has been _Jake this_ and _Jake that,_ and she doesn't like it. It's almost hard to believe that there was once a time it used to be _Leah this_ and _Leah that._

When did it change? Before, or after?

She knows she should be grateful; twice now Jacob has brought her brother home, and he seems to have become her unlikely ally in keeping Seth emotionally stable enough that he can bear to be on two legs, if her little brother's ramblings about his night are to be believed — because after Jacob had told her about their tempers and instability, she expected endless tears and heated arguments and possibly another explosion of fur. But Seth is . . . not quite at peace, no, but something which seems quite close to it.

And, yeah — she's just a little envious that all of this means that Seth now more or less worships the ground Jacob Black walks upon.

Seth nestles further down into the comfort of the bed he's now too big for, the echo of a smile still on his face.

And damn if it doesn't tug at something deep inside of her as she watches him. She loves this kid. More than her own life. More than anything. "Sleep, Seth."

"Mm-hm," he hums.

His breath evens out almost instantly, his mouth falling a little slack, but Leah doesn't stop coursing her hand through his hair for the longest time, not until the morning's light finally dips behind the greying clouds and she's reminded of the shadows she'd seen in Jacob's eyes.

Damn Jacob Black. He's going to be the end of her.

Leah sighs and lets her hand fall. She takes one last, long look at her brother — at his stupid hair, the way he is frowning even in his sleep — and quietly eases herself up from the edge of his bed and out of his room.

Leah Clearwater has absolutely no limits when it comes to her little brother. And if by some mysterious reason the world doesn't know this already, then it is damn well going to learn: Seth will not be involved in this bullshit. He's out all night, sleeping all day, leaving him barely a second to spare to grieve for Harry — he couldn't even attend the _funeral_ , for God's sake. And he's going to be missing s _chool_.

Leah might have very well thrown her own plans for college out of the window because of Sam Uley, but Seth _is_ going to graduate high school and he _is_ going to go to college — somewhere far, far away if she can manage it.

Sam and his _pack_ can go to hell.

And that's that.

Despite her lethal air of calm, Leah is composed as she pulls on her shoes and her jacket — the perfect picture of calm before a storm. And when she steps outside, the surprised jump of her heart is the only thing which slips through her otherwise cool facade.

Quil Jr. is just as surprised, betrayed by his nervous smile which looks wrong on his face. Wrong, because everything about him is harder, more angular and defined than she's ever seen, and that is when she realises: _of course_ Quil is one of them. He's an Ateara. And save for the ponytail tied at the nape of his neck, he's a spitting image of them all.

"Hey, Leah." He lifts up a wrapped dish in some sort of explanation, a thousand apologies ready to fall from his lips. He's always been a bit shy, she remembers. "My mom wanted to . . . Oh, uh, is it a bad time?"

"If you're here for Seth," Leah begins icily, "you can shove _that_ up your ass and go right back the way you came. Tell Sam — no, actually, why don't you tell Sam to come here himself?"

That will save her storming over. But, then . . . she doesn't really want Sam anywhere near her brother. That's the whole reason she's headed out. Knowing that he's on the same reservation is just about enough, although with a bit of luck Emily will hopefully have him move back to Neah Bay with her soon enough. And when they're gone, Leah won't have to think about this _'imprint'_ shit Jacob told her about ever again.

Quil just blinks, his bewilderment at her unfriendliness clearing as it's replaced by shock. " _Seth_? They got Seth?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Quil Ateara. I know everything." She crosses her arms and hopes she looks like her mother. Stern and reproachful. "Why don't you go and let Sam know I'm coming? I'll even be nice and give you a head-start. Not that you'll need it."

Quil's bushy eyebrows pull together tightly. "Why would I do that?"

Slow realisation sets in and, suddenly, the casserole he's holding drops to the floor, glass smashing noisily and food quickly puddling around his feet, but Quil doesn't so much as look down at it.

"Wait," he says. "You think I'm one of _them_ , don't you?"

"I _know_ you are," she replies, resolute, but he's not really listening as he furiously shouts over her, " _Why_ does _everyone_ think that?!"

"Uh — because you are?" Leah gestures at him, undaunted by the fact he looks closer to seven feet than six and is struggling to rein in his temper as he tarnishes her doorstep. He's _just_ like the rest of them: angry and all hard lines.

And _imposing._ Quil seems to think nothing of it as he braces a hand against the door frame and leans in closer, his face set with a bitterness she's seen before.

"I don't have anything to do with them," he huffs hotly, "why can't you see that?"

"I can _see_ just fine."

"Obviously not. You don't know a _thing_."

"I do," she tells him, feeling no particular pride about it. "Seth's my _brother_ and—"

"So ask him!" he yells, his hot breath blowing over her.

"—and I don't care what Sam orders you to do or what game he's got you playing, because I swear on my _life_ , if you don't get out of my face then it'll be Charlie Swan who drags you away," she threatens, if only because he's the first person she can think of. "Mom said he's already gunning for you. He'll be here in seconds."

(Okay, maybe that's a stretch, and they all know Forks cops have no jurisdiction here — not even their Chief of Police — but that won't stop Charlie coming if she asks. She is absolutely certain of that. Charlie is good people. And he is most definitely on the warpath when it comes to Sam Uley and his _gang_ , if her mother is to be believed.)

"Sam doesn't _order_ me to do anything," Quil says, his face turning as murderous as hers. It would almost be convincing if she didn't know better. "None of them do. _"_

Leah scoffs derisively, half expecting him to stamp his feet and throw a tantrum — though one of his tantrums probably looks a whole lot different than she's prepared for. "Yeah. Okay, Quil."

"Why do you — _how_ can you . . ." He snaps his head to the side, breath shaky as he closes his eyes for a brief second. "You know what? Fine. I don't care. You're just like everyone else," he spits, finally pushing himself away. The casserole from his feet flies everywhere as he all but leaps off her porch. "They all think the same thing, and you . . ." He looks entirely hopeless as he turns back towards her. "You do too, don't you?"

Refusing to break his stare, Leah blindly reaches for the door. "Bye, Quil. Tell Sam what I said, won't you?"

"Wait—"

Quil lurches forward, impossibly fast. Glass shatters loudly underneath his shoes as his palm slaps against the door to force it open. And, damn it, he looks so hurt by those few words, so pained, so like the boy he _should_ be, that she hesitates.

Maybe . . .

She sighs, raking her long hair away from her face. "What, Quil?"

"They got Seth?" he asks again. _"_ Are you _sure?_ "

"What do you mean, _am I sure?"_

"If they got him . . ." Quil's hand drops listlessly to his side, and in that moment he's just the kid who tags along with Jacob and Embry everywhere, the three of them thick as thieves as they tear across the reservation. "Everyone keeps . . . _looking_ at me. Even my grandpa acts like —" He swallows thickly. "Like I'm one of them. Or like I will be and he's just waiting for it."

"Quil—"

"If Seth's with them now . . ." He shakes his head in disbelief. "If he's . . . I'm next, aren't I?" he whispers, horror-struck. "What do I do?"

Oh, hell.

She doesn't have an answer for him. If Quil isn't part of Sam's little cadre, then it sure looks like he's _going_ to be — and soon. He is _huge_ , and she's pretty certain that if she puts her hand on his head he'll feel as hot as Seth felt when she'd brushed his spiky hair back upstairs.

It's the memory of her little brother arguing with Harry like this, of him exploding in the living room and disappearing for days and days that has her taking a step back, and it is with sudden clarity that she realises perhaps the scars on her cousin's face were not actually caused by a bear. It's only taken her four days to twig.

. . . Did _Sam_ do that?

Quil, mercifully, snaps her out of that thought.

"Please," he begs, yet more glass shattering as he steps with her, his face twisting at the wariness he can see in her eyes. "I'm not one of them, Leah. I'm not going to hurt you, _please_ , please, please believe me. I hate them. I hate _him_ , I do, I _swear—_ "

"Okay, okay, I believe you! Jeez!" She wants to look like she means it, she does, but still she can't stop herself pulling further away from him. "Just . . . have another deep breath, or something. Calm down."

Amazingly, he listens. Quil eyes shut as his chest heaves — once, twice, and thankfully something seems to have evened out when he looks at her again. He takes another step, hands outstretched, but the broken glass on the concrete porch finally grabs his attention.

"Oh, man," he moans. "Mom's gonna go _nuts_."

Leah bites her lip, suppressing the delirious urge to laugh at him and his suddenly _normal_ problems.

"Give me your shoes," she says, sticking her hand out before she can think about what she's doing.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers. "Just give me your shoes. Make sure you step over the glass and stuff when you come in, okay? I don't want to be picking bits out from your feet, too."

* * *

She's at the sink with Quil's spoiled sneakers when he pads into the kitchen. There's casserole all down his shirt and dirt on his knees, and his ponytail is coming loose.

Who will be the one to cut his hair? She curses herself for thinking it, for not realising it sooner.

"Where should I put this?" he asks.

"Did you get it all?" He nods, looking a little nervous again, and she jerks her head towards the bin before turning back to the sink. "Trash. Do you know what the dish looked like?"

"Uh . . ."

 _Boys._ She tries not to sigh. "Have a look in the fridge," she tells him a little distractedly, trying to concentrate as she eases out a shard embedded into the sole of his left shoe with her fingernail. She's got casserole all over her now, too. "I don't know what belongs to who, so if you think you'll get away with it then you can take whatever you think is best. I'm sure Joy won't notice."

"Uh," he blurts stupidly again, "I don't think she expects me to come back with it."

"So tell her you stayed. I invited you in and we had it for — _ow!_ " Leah hisses as her finger starts bleeding. "You mother _. . ._ _fudger._ "

Quil snickers. "You can swear, you know."

"Can't," she argues back half-heartedly, peering at her finger with narrowed eyes. "Joy would kick my ass. You're like, what, twelve? Yeah, good example."

"I'm nearly seventeen."

"Sure you are," she says all too agreeably, gingerly sucking at her injury around her smirk. It stings like a bitch. "Pass me a knife, would you? Second draw."

Quil looks somewhat amused as he hands it over. "I can do that you know. I mean, I broke it."

"Children shouldn't play with knives," she replies gravely.

"I told you, I'm nearly seventeen!"

"Mm-hm, okay, kiddo. Why don't you start looking for that dish while I do this?"

Leah bites back a smile as Quil grumbles a bit about _children_ and _seventeen_ and opens the fridge. It's always been _so_ easy to rib the younger boys — her mom used to reprimand her something rotten for it — but . . . maybe it's not really such a wise idea to poke fun at him, given the circumstances.

Having to be so careful with what she says is going to start getting old _real_ quick, she thinks as Quil whistles lowly.

"Shit," he remarks. "I forgot what this looked like. We lived off this crap for ages after my dad died; I _told_ my mom you'd have enough, but she wouldn't listen . . ." he muses almost absently as he ducks down to get a better view of all the shelves which are still packed to the rafters. "You won't have to go to the store for weeks."

Leah swallows a little uncomfortably. They'd buried Quil Sr. exactly a year after they'd buried Sarah Black. To this day that storm is the worst they've ever had.

It doesn't seem fair, really. Any of it.

"I hate casserole," she admits, because she knows Quil will understand she's not trying to be ungrateful — she just wants normality and her dad back, like he did. Like he still does.

"Tell me about it," he sighs woefully. "I still can't eat it without feeling like I want to cry."

Quil freezes, realising what he's just said. He flicks her a quick look over his reddening cheeks. "Uh — don't tell anyone I said that. The guys would . . . well, maybe not them, but y'know, still. Don't tell anyone."

Leah rolls her eyes and resists the urge to throw his shoe at him, handing it over instead. "One shoe for my secrecy."

He grins, turning a little daring as he braves asking, "What do I get for the other one?"

"You'll be lucky if I don't hit you with it," she retorts easily, though she's unable to hold in her astounded, choking laugh.

Quil simply stretches his grin and turns back to the fridge.

"Do you miss him?" She's aware she's treading in risky territory as she idly picks at his shoe, but can't stop herself from asking. "Your dad."

"Every day. You?"

"Every hour," she says, keeping her eyes trained on what she's doing. She's not sure if they're suddenly watering from the strain, or . . .

If Quil has noticed the sudden onslaught of tears, she's grateful he doesn't mention it. "Sucks, huh?"

"Yep." Another bit of glass drops into the sink as she clears her throat, quickly wiping her face in the crook of her shoulder. "You found anything yet?"

"All looks the same to me, if I'm honest," Quil huffs.

"So just pick the casserole that looks most disgusting."

"It _all_ looks—" he starts to retort, but he's cut off by the phone ringing at the wall. "You want me to get that?" he asks, nodding to her busy hands

Everyone she loves is upstairs and there can't possibly be any real emergency; the worst she could have imagined has happened, after all, so she shrugs. "Sure."

Quil answers the phone so brightly that it makes Leah wondering whether he might be able to get away with staying _just Quil_ and not becoming something else at all. She's surprised to find that she's actually starting to kind of like him. Troubles aside, he seems like a surprisingly uncomplicated kid, if a little goofy. He's funny.

That is, until, his face darkens and his mouth presses into one long, thin line. He covers the receiver tightly with his hand.

"Sam," he mouths. And when she pulls a face, God love him, he seems to straighten his back a little and says quietly, "I'll get rid of him."

But she shakes her head and holds a wet hand out for the phone. "It's fine," she mutters as he warily passes it over. She's not forgotten that she's supposed to have given Sam what for by now. And if she has to do it over the phone in front of Quil, then, well. So be it. The kid will probably appreciate it, if anything.

"What do you want?"

"Leah? Who was that?"

"None of your business," she replies, the words dripping with every bit of venom she can muster. No. She's not forgotten. But she thinks that, if she listens closely, she can almost hear his teeth grinding at her tone. Good.

"Is Seth there?"

"No."

Quil looks questioningly at her as she drops his shoe in the sink and stretches the phone cord. He looks a little mad, too, and she has the vague sense to know that if this carries on much longer that she's going to have a wolf in her kitchen before long. Most likely.

"Jacob says he sent him home." A beat. " _Before_ the next shift turned up," Sam adds disapprovingly, and she can picture the frown on his face, the hard press of his full lips.

It seems she has something else to thank Jacob for. He hadn't just sent Seth home, he'd sent him home before he was supposed to.

 _Damn Jacob Black_ , she thinks again.

"Not my problem."

"Leah—"

"Bye."

Quil flinches when she slams the phone back in its cradle. "What did he want?"

"Seth," she says simply, just as the phone starts ringing again. She snatches it back viciously. " _What_ , Sam?"

Sam sighs like her father used to when she was being purposefully difficult. It's maddening. "Where is Seth?"

"Not here," she snaps, and slams the phone down again. If she had the strength, she'd laugh at Quil looking mildly in awe of her, impressed and perhaps a little pleased that someone else seems to hate Sam as much as he does.

"Well — that told him."

"He's such an _ass._ "

"Hey, you don't have to tell me. How long has Seth been running with him anyway?"

"If I have anything to do with," Leah mutters darkly, all but stabbing at the second shoe now, "he won't be. Just wait 'til my mom gets back on her feet."

"I hope so, because my grandpa thinks he shits sunshine." Quil scoffs, but it's not as unkind as it probably should be. It just sounds like he can't believe that Old Quil has taken Sam's side and not his. "Nobody believes me when I say otherwise," he carries on. "Embry and Jake used to, but . . . I haven't spoken to them in so long . . . Weeks, actually."

He sounds so sad, but somehow she doesn't think it'll do any good to tell him that his friend was standing in the same spot only yesterday. Before she'd had something close to a nervous breakdown and he'd—

Well.

It's probably best to try and put a lid on the whole thing and forget about it, but for some reason Jacob's warmth and the way he'd carried her to her bed as if he _cared,_ murmuring to her with so much . . . _kindness_ in his voice — that's something she's sure she is going to remember for a long time. She keeps being reminded, keeps thinking about it. She _can't_ forget.

She tries to push it away all the same.

(Damn Jacob Black.)

"I shouldn't have lied to him," Leah finds herself admitting. "Sam's been coming over a lot lately. He might come and check."

Quil grunts, entirely nonplussed as he leans against the counter. "Let him."

"What about you?"

"What about me?" he asks, and Leah thinks she'd probably be flattered by his sudden show of chivalry if she wasn't imagining Sam storming into her house. Everything she'd been trying to avoid by going to him. And if he comes here, then . . . it feels like a bad idea to let Quil stay, considering how mad he had been before.

She shrugs. "It wouldn't be fair, would it?"

"Too bad. We gotta stick together now, you and me. And Seth," he says, nodding to himself as if he will help protect her brother. "We can't let them win, can we?"

If only he knew.

"I guess not," she replies, wishing that she didn't have to keep things from this kid. Quil is _nice._ His easy offer of friendship has these half-truths sitting so uncomfortably in her heart. She doesn't have that many friends anymore. "I was actually getting ready to go kick his ass when you showed."

"Really?" Quil brightens a little. "That's _awesome_. I'm almost sorry I got in the way of that."

"Sorry I accused you of — uh, you know."

"Hey, don't worry about it." Quil leans across and bumps his fist lightly against her shoulder. "We're friends now, right?"

"Right," she agrees. But it makes her feel awful, and it doesn't help any when Quil grins at her so triumphantly. "Friends."


	10. nine

_i know that i can't be your friend / it's my head or my heart and i'm caught in the middle_  
 _Avicii, Rita Ora, "Lonely Together — Acoustic"_

* * *

 **nine.**

* * *

Quil chatters on and on as Leah picks the last bits of glass out of his shoe. He is so pleased to have someone to talk to that he can hardly stand still, and he doesn't even seem to mind that he's more or less carrying the conversation by himself. He babbles at a million words a minute, talking about everything and nothing, almost as if she's been away for a month and he's taken it upon himself to bring her up to speed with everything she's missed.

(Not what _she's_ missed, she soon realises — what Jacob and Embry have missed.)

She's going to have to bite the bullet and shove him out of the door at this rate, and she's not looking forward to it.

How upset will he be? Though with the way he keeps looking at her, with that smile which stretches from ear to ear and makes her kind of hate herself . . . Leah has this sinking feeling that the kid might just about forgive her for anything, so long as she just promises to be his friend and have his back.

And she _does_ want to be his friend, because he's so obviously in need of one and because she'd want somebody to do the same thing for her if she needed it. Quil has clearly been too lonely for a long while now and, of all people, Leah knows what that feels like. With no Rachel and no Rebecca, with no Sam and no Emily, it had started to feel like there wasn't anybody left who she could rely on.

So she lets Quil stay, just a little longer, because she understands what it is to be alone, to want company; she understands how it feels to try and fill the silences by yourself; and she knows what it's like having nobody to lean on when it hurts.

It's not that she resents looking after her mom or her little brother — she'll do that to her dying breath — but sometimes . . . sometimes she thinks it would be nice if somebody could just maybe look after _her_ for a little bit. Even if that somebody has to be Jacob, who will be there to carry her upstairs when her knees give out, or Quil, who could quite possibly explode into a wolf at any given moment.

It had been a close call on her front doorstep. She knows that. And the thought of Quil's reaction should Sam turn up and start demanding to know where Seth is makes her feel sick, if only because she knows that Quil's smile is going to dip into something which resembles betrayal when he realises she's been playing him for a fool.

The phone rings and rings and rings as he talks. They both ignore it; she stares at the shoes in the sink whilst Quil raises his voice over the shrill sound until he's almost shouting, continuing to tell her about pointless things — things like what happened gym class when Natalie Locklear said something to Ruth what's-her-face that nearly caused a cat-fight the likes of which Tribal School has never seen — which quite frankly Leah doesn't really care about, but it really is nice to listen to somebody else's voice for a change . . .

. . . until the phone starts ringing for what might be the seventeenth time, or maybe the thirtieth, and Quil emits this sort of growl from behind his teeth that makes the hairs on her arms stand up on end, and he unceremoniously yanks out the landline with such force that the receiver rattles.

Leah tries not to look too surprised at Quil's sudden boldness, but then she's never really gotten to know him all that well before. Maybe he's like this all the time. Or maybe it's something new, something to do with the thing which is slumbering inside of him, waiting for the perfect moment to let itself loose — she can't tell. But what she does know is that she doesn't want to be around when it happens, because if this goes on for much longer then Quil is only going to hate her more.

And still . . . she can't send him away.

She sighs, more at herself than anything, and says, "Quil, really, anyone would think you _want_ Sam to come."

"Why not?" His grin is slightly feral. "I'll hold him, you punch."

" _Quil."_

"What?" he asks innocently, eyes bright. "It's a solid plan. And if he turns up with the others, then I figure you can take him and I'll take the rest. If one of them is around then the others usually aren't far behind, right?"

(Funny — people used to say exactly the same about her and the twins. But she hasn't spoken to Rachel or Rebecca in weeks, and she hasn't remembered to charge her cell since the night before the world went to shit.)

He sounds like he's joking, but Leah knows better. He's probably been begging for this argument to happen for ages, and now he thinks he's got a little back-up there's nothing really stopping him from giving his best friends a piece of his mind after they've treated him like shit. And they have — if it was her, she wouldn't have stood for it either.

"Quil," she says again, desperately trying to swallow her anguish, "I understand, I really do. I mean, there's nothing I want more than to rip Sam into pieces — but not . . . not when Seth's only upstairs, okay? If they storm over here and things get too out of hand then it might make him worse, y'know?"

Quil blinks, and his recklessness descends into something apologetic as his eyes flick to the ceiling and back. "I didn't — you didn't say that."

"I thought you realised," she tells him, suddenly feeling like _she's_ the one who needs to apologise to calm whatever's brewing underneath his skin. "He's sleeping. He was out all night."

"With them?"

"I think so. Yes. I don't know," Leah says quickly, because offering anything more than that means that she'll have to tell more lies and half-truths, and she hates the sudden look of loathing which has crossed Quil's face. "I don't know where he was, but if they come—"

"They won't get him," he promises, and he says it with such conviction, such determination to keep Seth safe that she knows this kid would honestly do it if she asks — that he'd protect Seth, because he's just that loyal to this friends with no questions asked. "Honest, Leah, between the two of us, we won't let them, okay? It'll be fine. Don't worry."

"Look, I appreciate it, you've no idea, but my mom's up there too, and she's still not great and — and I think it'd be best if you just . . . go, you know, just in case."

Quil struggles with it for a moment, looking as if he's trying to search for an argument which might allow him to stay and fight this battle with her. But then he sighs, slightly deflated, defeated, and Leah knows she's won.

"Okay. Yeah — yeah, you're right."

He turns back to the phone and plugs the cord back in, though the damage has probably already been done. It wouldn't surprise her if Sam turns up in the next ten minutes or so, and then they'll really be in trouble. Because two days ago Sam followed her into her bedroom to make sure that she would keep their secret, and when he sees her with Quil he will know that she's recognised the kid for what he is — what he's going to be.

(Emily's face springs to mind, and no — that definitely wasn't a bear attack.)

It's such a mess.

Leah wishes that she could tell Quil. In all honesty, she feels no better than she did when she thought Sam and Emily were carrying on behind her back. She hates secrets, and always has, if not more so since she realised that Sam was keeping them from her. They wreck everything. And she's frightened that this secret is going to wreck Quil, as surely as it has almost wrecked her brother.

Leah passes Quil his right shoe, now free of glass and casserole but looking slightly stained still, and knows her face is a mirror image of his. "I'm really sorry."

"Yeah. Me too," he says glumly, reluctantly slipping on his shoes. "You'll be okay?"

Leah can only nod, but Quil doesn't seem all that sure. "I don't have to go, you know. If you're worried—"

"I'm not. I'll be fine."

He still doesn't believe her. "I promise to be on my best behaviour if they come knocking," he says earnestly. "I won't even talk, if that's what you want. Just . . . let me stay in case they come here."

But Leah just wipes her hands on her jeans and shakes her head. She's being selfish; he needs to go, for his own good.

She opens the fridge and reaches for the first casserole she sees, quickly dumping its contents in the trash before washing out the dish as Quil watches in uneasy silence. He's not happy, but she has nothing left to offer him.

"It'll be okay," she tells him. She hopes she sounds convincing enough. "I'll call, yeah?"

"If you're sure," he replies, sounding anything less than — but he seems to have gotten the hint all the same. Thank God.

So why does she feel so bad?

Leah sighs over the sound of the sound of running water and the phone which has begun ringing again. "I'm sure."

* * *

A familiar, little red car is driving down the street when they step outside, and Leah feels Quil tense beside her as he recognises it at the same time she does.

"On second thought," he says, his mouth tight as the car seems to speed up, "I think I might stay."

"What happened to your best behaviour?" she teases, but the words don't feel quite right on her lips.

The car comes to a ground-breaking halt before them, its door swinging open before momentum is completely lost, and when Jacob leaps out Leah knows she's in trouble.

She straightens, almost defensively, rallying what feels like forgotten strength as Jacob's blazing, possessive gaze roves over her. He's looking for something, searching as he takes in every inch of her, and it's the strangest thing but it's almost like she can _feel_ his disapproval, his radiating fury . . . and a little bit of something else.

Leah lifts her chin, and refuses to baulk underneath his stare.

"Do you want me to stay?" she hears Quil ask, but he sounds a bit far away even though she knows he's right beside her still. "I can stay. I don't mind."

Jacob's eyes lock on Quil, and possession morphs seamlessly into malice. And it's frightening.

Quil growls.

Their only saving grace from this — she hopes — is Billy is in the passenger seat, who mercifully demands Jacob's attention at the same time Quil puts his hand on her elbow with surprising gentleness. "Leah?"

"Huh?"

"You want me to stick around?"

"It's fine. It's just Billy, right?" she says, suddenly a little bit too weak for her own liking.

Quil scowls. "And Jacob."

"And Jacob," she agrees, turning her attention back on him. He talks quietly, furiously with his father as he lifts him out of the car, arguing about something or the other — though she thinks she can take a pretty wild guess as to what they're so heatedly discussing.

"I'm gonna stay," Quil says firmly.

"No!" Leah whirls on him. " _No."_

"What?" Quil looks both outraged and offended. "Leah, he was . . . _looking_ at you. Like you're something to _eat._ That's not okay."

"He's probably just mad because he had to drive his dad or something, and—" (fuck, she is such an awful person) "—and, well, if he's running with Sam now then he's not going to like me, is he?"

"I'm not so sure," Quil says lowly, eyes narrowing as he looks back at Jacob.

Jacob glares right back and lurches a step forward, halted only by Billy who shakes his head and holds up a hand, as if to say, _Wait_. And Jacob — he balls his fists as his sides and shifts his hot gaze back onto Leah. He looks utterly _livid_ — but at her or because of his father, or maybe both, she can't work out.

Leah tries to remember herself and pushes the empty, clean dish into Quil's chest. "It'll be fine, I promise. I bet Billy just wants to see how my mom's doing, and then they'll go. Any funny business and I'll kick his ass, okay?"

Quil manages a snort. "Right."

"Your confidence is flattering."

"I didn't—"

"I know, I was kidding," she says with false amusement, all but shoving the dish at him now. "Go on."

Quil's fingers curl around the dish and he looks down at it, at Jacob, and then back to her — and then, God _damn_ it, he shakes his head and pushes it back into her hands. "I'll come back for it. Later."

Leah knows better than to fight, to do anything which will keep Quil on her drive for a second longer, so she just nods and says, "Alright."

"You'll be okay? You'll call?"

"Sure I will. Yeah."

Quil chews his lip, and for a second she really thinks that he's not going to leave, but then without warning he wraps up in his arms and almost lifts her off her feet. She has to put the dish flat against her stomach, and it digs in.

"Quil—"

"Thank you," he whispers quietly.

Leah can't help but huff a laugh into his shirt, thrown off by his sudden surge of affection. "What for?"

"Believing me." He gives her a funny little squeeze. "Be careful," he mutters then, and just as quickly he's gone, all but tearing across the driveway and down the street. He very purposefully shoves past a stone-faced Jacob before he breaks into a run and disappears completely out of sight.

Leah stares after him, her skin burning in his wake, and feels like she might cry.

But then Billy clears his throat, breaking her miserable train of thought as he pushes himself steadily up the path towards her. He doesn't need to admonish her — it's written all over his face; she _knows_ that look, she's grown up with it, and it's almost as bad as one of her mother's reprimands.

Almost.

"You're going to have to help me inside, kiddo," he grunts out.

Leah looks up for Jacob, but he's nowhere to be seen.

* * *

 _ **Covid-19 Sanity Update:**_ _I realise now that I underestimated how difficult it would be try and keep this girl in-character without all the wolf shit going on around her. I am forever re-writing HUGE portions of this fic because a) she's stubborn and b) she's stubborn but c) doesn't have unlimited access to the pack's mind and has to figure all this shit out for herself and d) because she hasn't completely figured it out/comprehended it, she's not so bitter and angry (yet?!)! Say it with me: aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! _


	11. ten

_casting love on me as if it were a spell i could not break / when it was a promise i could not make_  
 _Mumford & Sons, "Hold On To What You Believe"_

* * *

 **ten.**

* * *

Billy Black has known Sue Clearwater since they were children. He was Harry's best friend, his best man. His brother. He is Seth's godfather. So Leah believes it stands to reason, surely, that if he hasn't learned by now the Clearwaters live by their own rules then he never will.

She has been watching — _spying_ — rather inconspicuously through the window as the man tries his damned best to coax Sue back into some semblance of living, but even after an hour or so he's still apparently unable to understand that it's only something the woman is clearly only going to do when she's good and ready.

And Sue is not ready. At the moment she just looks unnervingly fragile, like a light breeze will easily knock her over and shatter her into pieces.

Ordinarily, Leah would have stood her ground and let her mother be. She would have told Billy just where exactly he could stick his nosy interference, but . . . well, it's been four days since Harry died, and not even having Seth back in the house has changed anything.

Leah hasn't said it out loud, but it's Sue's lack of awareness of Seth which has her worried more than anything else. The little punk has always been the light of their family; he is the favourite, the brightest, and Leah had really believed that he was going to be the game changer once he came home again. And yet Sue had barely blinked at his return.

So Leah is willing to let Billy try. He is the Chief, after all, and the Chief should know what to do when nobody else does. She will let the man soothe his own ego, let him fulfil his incessant need to try and _fix_ things within his tribe, even if it only results in her mom telling him to leave. At least that would be something.

Sue _has_ to snap at some point. It feels like they're all on tenterhooks, waiting for it, waiting for some kind of dramatic reaction. And it'll happen soon — it just has to. Maybe not for a few days yet, and only on Sue's own terms. Not anyone else's. Not hers, not Seth's, and certainly not Billy's.

The man is being very, very careful, as if he anticipates the very same — a snap. Leah watches the way he handles her mom like she is a frightened kitten, and what might be worse is that the comparison is accurate. Leah can almost hear his sage, quiet tone from the patio, can _see_ her mother's discomfort in the way she shies away—

—but it's Jacob who Leah can feel behind her, quietly watching her just as closely as she is watching their parents.

He's not made a sound and she doesn't understand how she just knows he is there — she just _does_ — and quite frankly, it frightens the living shit out of her. Enough that it's a small mercy she manages to keep her eyes trained on her mother and her voice steady as she speaks.

"Where did you go?"

Jacob's gulp is audible, but something (a sixth sense?) tells Leah that it's not because he's afraid. "If we get too angry . . ."

"It gets ugly," she finishes for him, remembering his cautionary words — only yesterday, in this very room. Leah thinks maybe she should start getting out more; since Harry died she's only left for his funeral and it feels as if she has been cooped up in this kitchen since. It's starting to drive her insane.

"Yes," Jacob says hoarsely from behind her.

There's a heavy pause, and she knows he is watching with her as her mom buries her face in her hands. She knows that he, too, can see how suddenly so very small Sue seems in the bathrobe she was wrapped up in before being brought downstairs. It does less to hide those awful pale, sharp features than Leah had hoped, though, and somehow makes all those meals which her mom has refused a little more obvious.

Leah briefly closes her eyes. She's failing. She needs to do better, be better.

She breathes deep, steadying herself and listening as Jacob shuffles on his feet like he wants to take a step closer but doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know, either.

"Are you okay?"

God. She wishes his voice didn't wash over her like that. When did _that_ start happening? She wants to turn around and face him, but she knows what she will see. He will have that look. The one she doesn't know what to do with except stand her ground and hope that he breaks first. The one that burns and burns, that feels like Jacob is _seeing_ her more deeply than she usually allows the naked eye.

It means something, the way he has been looking at her. It's more than him watching out for her little brother, more than him whispering poems in Quileute and sharing secrets in this kitchen. It's more than him being a second away from tearing poor Quil into pieces on the driveway.

And just like her mom, she is not ready. For this, whatever it is. And she wishes it would just . . . stop. Whatever this is, whatever it threatens, she wishes that it would just _stop_.

"Leah?"

"No," she answers honestly. There's no use in lying. She has a feeling he'll know. "Are you?"

"No."

She's pretty sure at this point that she'd know if Jacob lied, too, and she finds herself grateful that he doesn't. She doesn't need or have time for more dishonesty on this reservation.

He takes a ragged breath. "Leah—"

For the first time that day, she is relieved for the interruption of the ringing phone. Relieved that, when she finally spins around, Jacob has fixed his heated gaze on it instead of burning holes in her back. He glares at the phone as if it has ruined something somehow, his expression halfway between desperate and murderous.

"It's for you," she says.

Jacob's jaw tightens. "Sam."

"He's been calling non-stop."

"Why?"

She shrugs, wanting to pretend she doesn't care but also wanting to keep her nerve as Jacob turns his eyes back on her. "He seems pretty mad. He said you sent Seth away before you were supposed to."

"Good," is all Jacob grunts out before he finally reaches for the phone.

His answer surprises her, but then, she thinks, maybe not. After all, Jacob has become her unlikely ally, she reminds herself, apparently having appointed himself Seth's advocate in, well . . . everything, really: finding him, bringing him home, sending him home again — even knowing it would piss Sam off.

He seems to be on her side, too, though she can't help but wonder whether the solidarity he's shown might come with conditions. It's not as if Quil looked at her like _that_ , did he? _He_ didn't make her squirm when offering the same thing.

 _Nobody_ makes her squirm. And yet . . .

"Sam," Jacob answers. "Yeah, it's me. He's upstairs, I can hear him. I _told_ you he would — no, that was Quil."

Sucking in a breath as he listens, his argument building, Jacob looks furious again — more so, if it can be believed. "He's gone now, don't worry. I know. Yeah. I _know—"_

He looks at her suddenly, their eyes meeting. "She's here. Wait a sec," he says, and holds the phone out.

"Tell him to go fuck himself."

Jacob presses his lips together, fighting a smile. It's a nice change from the frown. "She says no. Jeez, she's _fine_ , Sam. Chill out."

Leah scoffs nastily. Really? Like Sam is honestly worried about her! For all he was around before the funeral, following her around and waiting for her at the top of the stairs, Leah hasn't seen hide or hair of him since.

"Yep, 'kay, fine. I'll be here. Bye."

"You edited," Leah accuses when Jake puts the phone back with a grunt.

"Do you want him to come here?" he asks, and nods when she doesn't answer. "I didn't think so. He told me to tell you to stay away from Quil. And charge your cell."

She's torn between laughing or scowling in her outrage. Sam might think he rules Jacob's life, might even think he rules Seth's life, but he does _not_ rule hers and he never has. "What's he gonna do about it?" she asks hotly. "The kid's absolutely terrified that he's next."

Jacob sighs, but doesn't look away. "He _is_ next."

"So you're gonna make it worse by isolating him? I feel like shit for lying to him. What do I say when he comes back, huh? That I kicked your ass, like he asked me to?"

"If it makes you feel better," Jake offers with a small, unsure smile, "I think he'll believe you. You're pretty good at the whole ass-kickin' thing when you want to be, and he did look like . . . well, you know. Like _that_."

"Like _what?_ "

"Like —" Jacob's voice dips a little, his eyes turning a little more wild than she expects. "Like he _likes_ you."

Another strange laugh bubbles inside of her throat. "Problem, Jacob?"

"No. Of course not," he says, but it's a little too quick, a little too automatic, and in spite of her frustration she can't help but smirk.

"I didn't think you cared," she croons, unable to stop herself even as he accepts the challenge in her voice and pushes himself away from the wall.

He begins to stalk across her kitchen, his scowl etched deep into his face as he moves closer and closer towards her. Everything about him says that he is not fazed by her taunts, her bitchiness or her temper. These horrible, nasty traits which have always been hers in one way or another but feel like they have manifested into something all the more terrible since her life began careering in a downward spiral.

(Did it start when Sam left? Or when Rebecca didn't come home? Before? Will she always be this way?)

He is so close than Leah can feel his breath when he warns, "Quil is dangerous, Leah. You shouldn't—"

"More dangerous than the rest of you?" she snaps, holding her ground. "Quil is _frightened_ , Jacob, not dangerous. He's your friend!"

Jacob has the decency to look a little ashamed and her words seem to bring him up short — enough that he stops in his tracks, and the . . . _burning_ look in his eyes which she is quickly becoming all too familiar with fades into sadness.

He swallows thickly, silent for a moment as he tries to find his next words. For some reason, he looks a little hurt. And then, "You . . . You don't think I'm dangerous, do you?"

"No," she answers honestly, because that's not what she meant or why her heart is hammering so. "And I don't believe Quil is, not really."

"Aside from the possibility of turning into a wolf at any given moment and ripping your face in two," he remarks, deadpan, and Leah knows without doubt now what really happened to her cousin.

She ignores the rolling of her stomach, the sudden sympathy she feels and extinguishes just as quickly. She wonders if that makes her truly heartless, if she is as cold and unforgiving as people are starting to believe despite it being _Emily_ who is the traitor.

"Aside from that," Leah agrees, throat dry, but it only seems to frustrate Jacob further.

"So _why_ ," he demands, pleadingly enough that she is again wondering what has changed between the two of them that makes him care so much. "If you know you could be hurt—"

"He's lonely, Jake. I know what that's like, and it's not as much fun as I make it out to be."

Although Jacob looks like he wants to protest even though he knows that it's true, he doesn't have an immediate answer. He ducks his gaze and she finally pulls away from him, focusing back on her mom sitting in the yard still with Billy, idly wondering if the Chief has learned his lesson to not push a Clearwater yet.

Jacob comes to stand beside her by the kitchen counter and sighs deeply as he leans against it, closing the distance between them again. "Quil . . . Sam reckons it will be really soon. He can feel it, he says. He'll know the truth soon enough."

"Yeah," Leah mutters. "And when he becomes like you, he's going to hate me when he realises that not only did I _know_ but that I _didn't tell him_."

"He won't hate you. Nobody hates you."

Jacob's words are quick, automatic, meant to appease her quickly rather than agree with anything she says. It's irritating, like a parent soothing their child even if it means they have to lie just because of a natural instinct to comfort.

"Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. In the end . . . people just stop bothering when all you do is bite their head off. I'm sure you will too, soon enough."

"Nah. I kinda like it," he says, apparently shocking himself as much as he does her with the admission. And then, with an embarrassed look down at her, he adds, "What I mean, is . . . You're honest. A bit brutal, sure, but at least I know what's really on your mind, how you really feel, y'know?" He scratches the back of his neck, still embarrassed. "That's what Rach and Beck always used to say, anyway."

She scoffs next to his shoulder. "What do they know. I'll be surprised if they remember who I am."

Leah misses the twins something fierce, her sisters in all but blood. And she might understand now — better than she ever has before, anyway — why Rebecca's put three thousand miles between herself and La Push in order to breathe right, why Rachel keeps her college-life and her Rez-life as separate as possible . . . but she is angry with them for not being able to come for just _one day_ to hold her hand at Harry's funeral like she'd held theirs at Sarah's seven years ago.

Jacob simply grins down at her as if he's single-handedly discovered a worldwide problem in her response. "See?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Leah rolls her eyes and looks away, wondering if he can tell that it hurts to look at him and be reminded of her friends. She often sees them winking back at her in his face. She sees Rachel's sheer nerve and her wilfulness; Rebecca's sincerity and her compassion; both of their wit and their humour. And he is so, so like his sisters that sometimes her chest aches when she pays enough attention to him to be reminded of that.

Still triumphant, Jacob nudges her with his arm which is as hot as when he carried her up the stairs and held her in one piece whilst she cried. She doesn't recall him leaving afterwards, but she knows he stayed until she succumbed to her exhaustion.

"Are you staying?" _Again,_ she adds silently. Not to be unkind, rather because she is wondering if she needs to thank him although though she's not certain exactly what it is she'd be saying thank you for.

She feels him tense, he's still that close. "You want me to go?"

"You said to Sam you'd be here—"

"Oh." Jacob relaxes, leaning his weight against the counter. Their backs are to the window. "He asked me to stick around."

"To keep an eye on me?"

"Something like that," Jacob admits with an air of guilt.

"Because of Quil or because of what you told me? About this imprinting thing?" Knowing Sam, she thinks, it would make sense why he seems so pissed after spending so long keeping his betrayal a secret.

"Actually . . . he doesn't know I told you that."

"But how?" Leah frowns. "What about the wolf thing? Reading each other's minds and having no privacy?"

"He hasn't caught me yet," Jacob says, but his show of cocky arrogance is a little shaky and has her frowning again when her mother shuffles through the back door, looking for all the world as if she wishes she could hide completely in that robe.

They both immediately push away from the counter, and Jacob's warmth is a sudden loss at her side as she goes to her mom and he goes to his dad to help the wheelchair over the threshold.

Billy's heavy, concerned eyes tell Leah that he hasn't made any progress; he's disappointed and frustrated, lips in a thin line. She kind of wants to say _I told you so,_ except she didn't really tell him and he's never appreciated her impertinence. (Billy has always believed she is the bad influence on his daughters, not the other way around. And — fine, he's not wrong, but she's not going to tell him that.)

They don't speak, but they do sigh together as Sue starts making her retreat back up the stairs. At least she looks like she's still breathing underneath that robe.

Feeling Jacob's eyes on her again, Leah thinks her mom might be the only one who is.


	12. eleven

_i've no language left to say it / all i do is crave to her_  
 _Hozier, "Foreigner's God"_

* * *

 **eleven.**

* * *

"You gonna tell me what that's about?" Billy asks quietly. His eyebrows are high as he looks pointedly between where Jacob stands at the side of his wheelchair, arms crossed, and the doorway which Leah disappeared through as she trailed after her mom.

"What's about what?" Jacob replies with as much innocence as he can muster. He feels shaky, but not like he does when he's trying to fight a phase triggered by his temper. This is something else — something much more akin to the feeling of standing on the edge of the cliffs before he dives into the grey waters below.

(Adrenaline, he vaguely recalls with some difficulty. Being so close to Leah, so . . . _familiar_ with her in a way he's not been for years has his heart in his throat and blood singing.)

"You run off when Quil's standing on her doorstep with his arms around her—" his dad begins, and it's an effort from Jacob to keep a snarl leashed at the reminder "—and now you're staring after her like you'll never see her again."

His eyes snap back to his father. He knows he really needs to leash more than a single snarl, especially if he's going to try and keep this a secret for much longer. He can't afford to be defensive.

"I'm not," he says in spite of himself, arms still crossed over his chest and his fingers curled right in his armpits.

Billy's smirk is uncomfortably all too-knowing and, Jacob thinks, slightly smug. "You can't fool this old man, son."

"She's having a hard time. I know what it's like. That's all."

"Is it really?"

Jacob scowls, dropping his hands. "You get all weird and intense when you're being cryptic. Kinda reminds me of when you were trying to tell me your superstitious nonsense wasn't really nonsense at all — and doing a bad job of it, too," he replies hotly. Unkindly. Defensive again. Damn it all to hell.

Nonplussed, Billy sits back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. "Nonsense or not, I know what it is to keep a secret. And for what it's worth—"

"You don't know anything, Dad." He really, really doesn't. He might be on the Council, might be held in a higher regard than the rest of the men that sit there, but Billy knows nothing of what it is to be . . . _this._

"I think you'd be surprised."

Calming his face into something a little less hostile — and doubtful that he'll be able to manage it — Jacob changes the subject before he gets himself in deeper waters. Billy has raised two daughters; he knows how to get information if he really wants it, especially from their brother who always covered for them, and Jacob refuses to fall into any kind of trap his dad might be trying to set.

Jacob blows a breath that betrays his frustration. Too bad. "Do you need me to take you home?"

"Why, where are you going?" Billy asks quickly, jolted from his private conspiracies. "You were on patrol all night."

 _Yes_ , Jacob thinks, _and I was less than an hour into my sleep when you woke me up for a ride here_. But instead he says, "I'm coming back. Sam wants me to stick around. Keep Quil away."

"How long will it be?"

"Soon," Jacob tells him, knowing what his father really means. "A few days, maybe. Less. So if you're going home—"

"I wanted to head over to Charlie's, actually," Billy says, and he sounds a little apologetic about it now that he knows Sam's orders are involved. Billy might be the Chief, but only in name — Sam is the real Chief, the real Alpha, for as long as Jacob refuses the title. It would be kind of weird, anyway, Jacob thinks, to have his dad looking at him for direction if he assumed the job.

"I was hoping you might come, too," Billy continues within the quiet of Clearwaters' kitchen. Jacob doubts that his father can hear Leah talking to Sue upstairs like he can, nor that he can hear the stutter in Seth's low snores as though the kid is dreaming. "Charlie's been going out of his mind, and considering you were the last person to see her . . ."

Bella. Has she saved her bloodsucker yet, who she is so willing to die for? Maybe she's already dead.

Jacob swallows uncomfortably, feeling more terrible for Charlie than he does himself. It's a far cry from the mess he had been in his garage two days ago, and the sudden change might have seemed jarring if the imprint hadn't completely obliterated his growing feelings for Bella.

"You know she might not come home, right? We'll be going to another funeral within the week, only this time it will be a sham."

He regrets the words as soon as he says them, hearing Billy's sharp intake of breath. He also feels like he's betrayed Leah somehow, saying something he knows she'd hate, using her father to drive his point home about Bella and the choices she's made. It feels wrong, too.

Jacob swallows, appropriately shamed. "Sorry."

His dad reaches up and pats his arm. "Don't worry about it," he says. "You know, maybe I'll just call ahead first and see if he's home. Don't think Sue will mind if I use her phone, do you?" he asks then, but he's already pushing his chair over the tiled floor and towards the wall where the phone sits in its cradle.

"'Kay. I'm gonna check on Seth, see how he's doing."

Billy turns his head back. "I think Leah might have that one covered, Jake."

"All the same," he mumbles, shrugging. He can't tell anyone that the silence upstairs worries him, that it's not really Seth he's worried for. That after standing so close to Leah without her protesting, her scent in his nose and her warmth against his side . . . it hurts now, her absence.

The piercing look Jacob receives from his father is just a raised bushy brow shy of curious, but he ignores it and escapes from the kitchen before he has to explain himself. It would be just the damn pinnacle of his life if his father really knew what was going on.

Was that what the smug look had been? Shit, Jacob hopes not. The Council, Sam, the pack — they will all know before the sun has set, if Billy has figured it out.

Jacob's gut clenches as he takes the stairs two at a time. His father is a proud, traditional old man; he was damn near triumphant when his son phased for the first time, and he will be freakin' _euphoric_ if he's ever able to announce that same son has imprinted. God knows what he would have done if Jacob had asked Sam to step down and returned home as Alpha.

It doesn't bear thinking about.

So he doesn't. He listens for Leah, for Seth, and stops short just before he reaches the top of the stairs when he hears the kid's sleepy, muffled voice.

"Leah?"

"You're okay," she murmurs, and Jacob cranes his head around the banister, feeling like an intruder.

Her back is to him as she sits on the edge of Seth's bed, the door slightly ajar and blocking the kid's face from Jacob's view. She shushes her brother, her hand reaching out to soothe him. "You were just dreaming. You're okay."

"It . . . It was _so real . . ._ "

Seth gulps, his breathing coming in fits and starts, and Leah keeps up her constant murmur of nothings and smoothing his hair down as he slowly but surely calms down. Jacob can't bear to imagine trembling limbs and how close Seth might've been to—

No. He refuses to imagine it. Not after just barely getting over seeing her with Quil, who could have cracked at any God given moment.

Jacob wants to trust Leah. He does. He's going to have to if he has a chance at surviving being away from her, because she'll surely kill him herself if he hovers around her for any longer — not without him being able to provide her a better excuse than Sam being concerned for her safety. He's sure of this, because he has known her for all his life; he has long learned that she likes her space. When they were younger, she had a habit of going off for hours on her own until Harry started calling around the Rez, looking for her, only to find her sitting in a tree or on one of the beaches.

And yet . . . Seth is young. Quil hasn't even been broken in. Does she even realise what could happen to her if—

Jacob sits at the top of the stairs and takes a quiet, steadying breath, painfully aware that it's the imprint which has him so concerned and frightened that she'll be hurt like Emily. Worse than Emily. No wonder Sam's tail is so bent out of shape after what happened, what he did.

"Come on," Leah says, her voice the kind of soft which Jacob knows it only ever is when she's talking to or about her brother. "Try and go back to sleep, yeah?"

"It was so real," Seth whispers again. "I thought . . ."

Leah doesn't ask, but Jacob can feel her worry. "Sleep. It's okay," she says instead.

He sniffs. "Lee?"

"Yeah?"

It takes a minute for Seth to speak again. And when he does, his words are hesitant. "Does Mom . . . Do you hate me?"

"No!" The sharp sound from Leah is just on the edge of a yell. "No. I don't hate you, Seth. I hate what's happened to you, but I don't hate _you._ Never."

"But if I hadn't—"

"You couldn't help that," Leah tells him firmly. There is a long, sad moment of silence, and then, "Seth, you know it's not your fault, right?"

"But—"

" _No,_ Seth. He had a bad heart since he was a kid, way before he married Mom. And he didn't look after himself like he should have. You know that. He liked fish fry too much."

Either realising that he's fighting a losing battle or he's too upset to answer, Seth is quiet again. Jacob, meanwhile, shifts his body quietly down several stairs. Partly because he _is_ an intruder on this moment, and partly because he doesn't want to be found so blatantly eavesdropping.

"It's not your fault," Leah says again. "If anything, you should have been told. Warned, I don't know."

Seth's harsh gulp is audible from where Jacob sits with his keen ears. "They didn't know. I remember . . . they all thought I was Quil." There is a prickle to the words, and Jacob recognises it as the same automatic defensiveness the pack has for one another whether Seth intends it or not. It's instinctual for him, now, and Jacob is proud.

It doesn't lessen Leah's resent, even though she's already more or less been told the same thing. That they weren't watching or waiting for her little brother because he is so young. "Would it have made it easier?" she asks. "If someone had told you?"

"I wouldn't have believed them."

"If they had," she persists, "and then you realised it was all true. Whether you believed them or not. You think you'd feel differently now?"

"Dunno," Seth mumbles. "Maybe, I guess, if Dad had been the one to . . . but—"

"But he didn't," she finishes for him.

"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Seth sighs with what sounds like hopelessness, and Jacob hears a shuffle on the bed as though the kid is rolling over, turning his back to the world.

Leah stays with him a while after that, long enough that Billy has finished his phone call with Charlie and has pushed his chair down the hallway from the kitchen. Jacob stands on the stairs and squares his shoulders, meeting his father's gaze, ready to be told that they need to leave and drive to Forks.

But Billy shakes his head and, after what he's been listening to, Jacob can't care less if his relief shows.

"Gonna coast it home," his father says, weathered hands on the wheels of his chair. "Charlie's gonna meet me there."

"Is she home?"

"No. He hasn't heard anything, but it's not doing him any good sitting at home and waiting for her."

Charlie will be doing a lot of that, Jacob thinks, if Bella's eyes are red. But this time he doesn't voice his bitter remarks and instead he dutifully helps his father over the doorstep before waving him off down the drive.

When he turns back into the house, Leah is sitting on exactly the same stair he'd been on not two minutes ago. There's some sort of twisted satisfaction in it, where she sits and stares at him, and it belongs wholly to the imprint. The reasonable part of Jacob — however small it might be, now — resents the sense of possession. The other part of him revels in it.

Leah purses her lips together thoughtfully as she considers him. Jacob finds that he quite likes that, too. "I want to do something you're going to think is stupid," she says in response to his questioning look.

"You want to tell Quil."

She's not even a little surprised that he knows what it is she wants to do. Instead she nods, her resolve clear and bright in her tired brown eyes.

"You're right," he agrees, sounding a little resigned about it even to himself. "I do think that's really stupid."

"Are you going to stop me?"

"Since when has anyone ever been able to stop you from doing what you wanted?" Jacob almost laughs, and a small smile plays at her lips. But she seems pleased, either with herself or what he's said. Perhaps even both.

"I thought it might fall into your whole 'sticking around and keeping Leah out of trouble' thing," she says. "You're not even going to talk me out of it?"

"Nope." He might have known what she was planning to do as soon as he'd heard her question Seth, but she doesn't know what _he's_ going to do. "I'm coming with you."


	13. twelve

_i'm waking up my mind, i'm just trying to kill the silence / i'm ripping off the blinds, i'm just trying to let some light in_  
 _Ruel, "Hard Sometimes"_

* * *

 **twelve.**

* * *

Jacob simply smirks in the long moment of silence which follows, evidently amused that he's managed to catch her so off-guard.

"What did you expect?" he asks after watching her blink stupidly.

"Well . . . a fight, honestly," Leah admits quietly. After having been building herself up for an argument she wasn't going to back down on, the last thing she expected was for him to so easily agree with her — let alone for him to announce that he plans to tag along, too. "What happened to it being a terrible idea?"

"It is a terrible idea," Jake says all-too-agreeably, that smirk still on his face which makes him look closer to his sixteen years than it does the rest of his body.

"So remind me again why you're not going to stop me?" she asks, frowning in her disbelief and confusion after he's so vehemently insisted that Quil is dangerous. Not forgetting that he has been given his orders from Sam (the bastard), who has essentially made Jacob her babysitter to stop her from doing exactly this.

(Because as much as she hates it, as much as she hates _him_ , Sam knows her. He knows how she hates secrets and being kept in the dark, which makes it ridiculous to suggest that Quil is the one who he's really worried about. After years of living in one another's pockets, Sam would quickly have put two and two together and known exactly what it is she wants to do before she managed to figure it out for herself.)

Jacob shrugs. "There's really no point. As soon as you're out of my sight you'll just go and find Quil anyway."

(And apparently Jacob knows her too, which surprisingly — or rather _unsurprisingly,_ given how the rest of this day is going — doesn't piss her off as much.)

"This way I can at least make sure you don't get torn to pieces while you do it," Jacob continues in the same light tone despite that he is talking about placing himself between her and certain death — or permanent disfigurement, Leah thinks as her cousin's face comes to mind once again.

"You don't need to say it quite like that," she mutters. She wants to tell Quil, she _has_ to tell Quil, otherwise this secret is going to eat her up and swallow her whole . . . but now she can't help wonder if she's doing it for the right reasons. _She_ might think it's the right thing to do, but will Quil see it that way?

Jacob's shit-eating smirk turns slightly grim. "Doubting yourself?"

She narrows her eyes accusingly. "Now I am."

"Don't. It's the right thing to do. I would have told him myself already if I could."

"What do you . . ." she starts, then she suddenly remembers their conversation yesterday morning — before she'd had something close to the meltdown she still won't (or can't) acknowledge. "Oh. Right. Alpha."

"Yep," he says, lips popping. "Can't breathe a word about it, so you're going to have to do most of the talking. The first part, at least. I'll be choking on thin air otherwise."

"That's if he doesn't explode first."

Jake shakes his head, eyes rolling. "It's called phasing, you know." He steps closer and holds his hand out, which she reaches out for almost instinctively, allowing him to hoist her up from where she sits on the stairs. "And even if he does, which I kind of think he will, then I'll have to tell him all about it anyway. So no big deal, right? Just . . . make sure you're not standing too close to him, okay?"

"Right. God forbid you have a coronary or something," she says without thinking. She freezes on the last word, her fingers slipping from Jake's and her eyes flickering over the banister towards the living room where Harry fell, and she swallows thickly.

"Hey," Jake breathes softly after what might be a minute. Two. Longer. The whole world is spinning. "Look at me."

Leah casts her eyes down towards where this annoying kid she's known forever (and who both confuses and frightens the living shit out of her) stands at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her, and she gives a shaky smile that even she wouldn't believe if she saw herself in the mirror.

"That was a bad joke, huh?"

Jacob returns her smile. It's steadier than her own, yet sadder and softer. "I took out the rug, you know. It's outside."

"I didn't notice," she says quietly, oddly touched underneath how sick she feels with herself. She is no less off balance, but . . . _sure,_ somehow, like there's something to hold on to and right herself with even as everything else goes to shit. She doesn't know what exactly, and yet she's certain of it all the same.

"I can put it back, if you want."

"No." Leah recalls how it'd looked: shredded, ugly, its patterns near unrecognisable as she'd picked up the scraps of Seth's clothes afterwards. "I mean, it's ruined anyway."

He nods. "That's what I thought."

"I . . ." Leah sucks in a quiet breath. "Thanks."

"Sure, sure," he says, as though it's nothing at all. He offers his warm hand out again, and she finds herself taking it not just because she wants to walk down the last few stairs feeling somewhat steadier. "You wanna leave a note or something?"

"No. They'll be fine." Her mom is staring at the ceiling again and Seth is doing his best to feign sleep. "Are we walking or driving over?"

Jacob considers her for a few seconds, his fingers still wrapped around hers. "Better drive. If shit hits the fan then I don't want you to have to walk back."

She blinks. "You'd let me drive your car?"

"Why not?"

"You love your car," she says. "You spent all of Christmas dinner trying to tell Bella how amazing it was. The Coolest Car in the World, remember?"

Jacob's eyebrows shoot up. "You were listening to that?"

"I think everyone _except_ Bella listened to that," Leah says tartly, thinking back to three months ago when he'd sat across from the Swan girl at the makeshift dinner table they'd put together to accommodate their three families. Bella might have well as not been there at all with her dead eyes and broken heart.

The reminder of Charlie's daughter has Leah freeing her fingers from Jacob's, because she remembers more than last Christmas — she remembers the huge crush he has on the girl, too, and for some inexplicable reason there is a flare of anger in her chest at the thought.

Leah tries to reason with herself that it's because Jacob deserves more than a pale-faced girl who barely uttered a word to him at Christmas, who has spent months becoming his friend and has instead chosen the vampires and Italy and blood and death. Jacob is a good kid. Kind, even when nobody gives him good reason to be.

"Have you heard from her?" Leah asks then, unable to help herself. She reaches for her jacket hanging off the peg on the wall, plucks her house keys from the bowl on the side, and pretends she's asking for a reason other than morbid curiosity as she slips her arms into her jacket.

"No," Jacob answers, and when Leah snatches a glance at his face there is a scowl upon it which he's directed at the floor. "Why?"

Leah tips her head back, freeing her trapped hair from the collar of her jacket with a swipe of her fingers just so that she doesn't have to meet his eyes. And, hoping her tone is casual enough, she says, "No reason. Just wondering when I need to kidnap you and Seth before war breaks out."

"Me _and_ Seth?"

"Why not? I'll take Quil, too."

Jacob snorts softly. "Okay, Little Engine That Could. Let's see if that works against Sam."

She tilts her chin in a show of bravery. "You just leave Sam to me."

"Happily," he says before gesturing to the door, a wide and sweeping motion. "Lead the way, Little Engine."

Leah skips past him with her head high, throwing a particularly rude gesture over her shoulder her mom would kill her for as she goes. Jacob only laughs.

* * *

In the car, Jacob's hulking frame seems to take up every inch of free space even with his seat pushed back as far as it can go and then some.

He grins when he catches her staring in bewilderment that he can fit, let alone _drive_ the thing looking as comfortable as he is. His huge, solid arm keeps bumping into hers when he changes gear. "I had to kind of break the seat," he explains. "It was like sitting in one of those red and yellow toy cars."

"Kind of?"

"Ripped out the suspension assembly and made my own." He grins again with a small colour of self-consciousness tinting his cheeks. "And the seat pan," he adds. "I had to weld that."

"Too bad for anyone sitting in the back," she remarks, covering how slightly awed she is that he actually seems like he knows what he's doing around cars. Most boys pretended just to save face. "Seth and Quil will be really cramped. We'll have to get a new car. Bigger."

Jacob's eyes widen with mock horror. "That hurts my feelings."

"Feeling," she corrects.

"Rude. I was going to say that we should just tie Quil to the roof, but I think you can take that honour."

More than happy to take the distraction and play along, Leah simply laughs. "You can try." There's something easy in being able to joke with Jacob even if it's obvious their hearts are not quite in it. "Don't suppose there's anyone else we need to make room for, is there?"

"Embry," Jake answers automatically. "He can go in the trunk. The rest of them can stay behind and sort it out for themselves."

"Poor Sam," she says with as little sympathy as she can. It's not difficult.

"He'll be furious. But, hey, whatever. I'm already a dead man. What can he do?"

Leah can't think why he's in any kind of trouble, especially when it's not as if he's done anything wrong. Except for maybe sending Seth home before he was supposed to, but then Jacob has been saying a lot of things which don't make sense lately — almost like he can't stop himself from doing it.

"How dead?" she ventures with slight hesitancy. "What have you done?"

"Sam will probably say it's what I'm doing rather than what I've done," Jacob mutters, hands tight on the steering wheel and voice so low that Leah knows he's talking more to himself than he is her.

"You know, I think you forget that I don't have unbidden access to your mind," she reminds him lightly, "so I don't know what you mean."

"I know," he says with a slight sigh Leah has a feeling he wanted to hide. "I guess that's my problem, isn't it?"

"I guess so."

With a suspicion that they're talking about different things which aren't entirely related to Sam now, Leah brushes his words off along with everything else she doesn't want to question. Like how Jacob rests his arm against hers instead of the gearshift, how he leans a little closer over to her side rather than the window. Like how she doesn't really care.

Jacob clears his throat. "So," he says, loudly enough that she knows he's deliberately changing the conversation, "how did you think this thing was going to go down? You telling Quil?"

She accepts his evasiveness easily. "Well, I wasn't really banking on you being around, so . . . I don't know." There's a beat of silence as she imagines Quil rearing back as a gigantic wolf and howling. "Tell him and run?"

"Run," Jacob repeats slightly disbelievingly.

". . . I'm fast?" she offers, knowing that Jacob will laugh at her. He does, exactly as she expects, and she pulls a face at him. "I am!"

"I bet I'm faster," he says. "Gonna have to be, when—" Jacob stops abruptly, his amusement flying away with the sound of his breath and she thinks he might be imagining exactly what she was not one minute ago. "Well. You know."

She sighs. It's almost like he _wants_ her to ask what is on his mind, and yet she knows that he likely won't give her a straight answer even if she does.

"No. I don't," she says. "Is this about how dead you are?"

"Yep."

"You wanna talk about it?" she asks in the same tone that suggests she wishes he doesn't. All the same, despite her reluctance, it feels like the least she can offer after the emotion he's had to endure from her.

"Nope," he says, and Leah hopes her relief isn't too palpable. Obviously Jacob _needs_ to talk about it, but he doesn't _want_ to. Perhaps it's just because she's not the person he wants to talk about it with, and that's fine by her. Besides, she's the last person in the world who could push someone else to talk when she refuses to share her own problems. She might have turned into a bit of a hypocrite as of late, but she's not usually one for such double-standards.

The drive doesn't take much longer after that. It seems like the car is quiet with thoughtful silence for only a heartbeat before Jacob is announcing that they've turned into Quil's street, and he points to the one-storey house where she knows Old Quil lives with his daughter-in-law and grandson.

Jacob pulls in at the bottom of the Ateara's drive, his movements methodical but relaxed as he parks and cuts the engine before ducking his head a little to look clearly through the window on her side. His breath blows over her cheek.

"Is he in?" she asks, following his gaze and refusing to shiver.

"Blasting that stupid band he loves from his bedroom. Jimmy Eat someone-or-something, I don't know, but he always brings their CD to the garage whenever we're working on something with Embry. He knows how much it annoys us."

"Not eighties hair metal?" she asks, meaning to be funny, however her voice sounds a little weaker than she expected. She can't hear anything coming from Quil's house, and she's still unused to everyone else around her who can apparently hear everything. It's a little disconcerting, knowing Jacob hears the nervous beat in her chest.

"Nah, that's all me." Jacob huffs and slaps his hand lightly against the steering wheel, his joke falling flat. "Whelp. Come on, then."

"We can't do it in _there,_ Jake. What if Mrs. Ateara or Old Quil are in?"

"They're not," he says with certainty. Even still, he takes a few seconds to deliberate, his brow furrowing in thought. "But you're right. How about you get him out to the yard? I'll go round the back."

It's a better plan than tilting Quil's world on its axis out here on the street, so Leah says, "Okay," and takes the keys from Jacob, jumping out of the car before she has a chance to lose her nerve.


End file.
